Specificity without Correspondence: Vocational Secondary Education and Youth Employment in Indonesia

Abstract

Indonesia has expanded vocational secondary education on the expectation that occupational specificity would ease the transition to employment, yet vocational graduates have persistently recorded unemployment rates at or above those of general secondary graduates, inverting the policy’s central premise. This study aims to examine how the policy framework constructs the relationship between vocational schooling and employment, to identify the conditions comparative evidence establishes as necessary for vocational education to improve transition outcomes, and to formulate reconstruction that improves outcomes without sacrificing lifecycle adaptability. The research combines qualitative document analysis with normative examination of the framework, analysing the National Education System Law, national education standards, the presidential instruction on vocational school revitalisation, and the presidential regulation on vocational education revitalisation, tested against scholarship in labour economics, comparative vocational systems, and workplace learning theory. The findings show that specificity confers an entry advantage only where curricula correspond to employer requirements, a correspondence weakened in Indonesia by supply-driven programme allocation, absent local labour market information, and industry agreements limited to accepting placements; that employer-linked systems rest on collective institutions absent in the Indonesian configuration, producing thin and unstable firm engagement; that workplace practice is regulated by duration rather than by affordance; and that compressing general education transfers risk from labour market entry to later working life. The article recommends sectoral coordinating capacity, regulation of placement affordance, host supervisor preparation, a protected general education floor, and investment in guidance and pathway transfer.