2 The quantity of subject or materials for the elementary students up to middle students.
3 A set of curriculum which will be developed by institution or schools based on an arranging guidance curriculum which does not separate from
the based standard. 4 The educational calendar is arranged for showing the teaching-learning
events at schools or other institutions.
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The writer concludes that curriculum is a written document which describes objectives, goals, scope and sequences, and systems as a guideline for
implementing the teaching-learning process.
2. Curriculum for Vocational School SMK
Vocational school is a school which is focused on the rationales of the learning and theory.
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It means that vocational school students do not only concern in acquiring the materials or getting the knowledge, but also they
concern in getting the experience or applying the theories and skills that they have gotten in a classroom. Furthermore, the materials or the theory that have
been learnt by the students should correlate to their major. It supposes to the students’ knowledge can be applied in the workplace as the major that they
have been taken. Vocational education refers to vocational school and workplace that the
students have to build their professional competence by building meaningful relations between knowledge, skills, and attitudes. In other words, the aims of
vocational education are integrating knowledge, skills, and attitudes while they are simultaneously need to develop a professional identity.
There are the reasons why vocational school is chosen by students rather than general school, they are: First, vocational school offers many subjects that
48
Putu Sudira MP, Kurikulum Tingkat Satuan Pendidikan SMK, Jakarta: Departemen Pendidikan Nasional Direktoral Jenderal Pendidikan Dasar dan Menengah Direktorat Pembinaan
Sekolah Menengah Kejuruan Subdit Pembelajaran, 2006, p. 18.
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Harmen Schaap, Liesbeth Baartman, and Elly de Bruijn, Students’ Learning Processes
during School-Based Learning and Workplace Learning in Vocational Education: A Review, Journal of Vocations and Learning,5, 2012, p. 99.
can be chosen by the students. Therefore, the students have had their own concern major based on what they want.
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Second, the students’ poorly educated parents are more likely to attend vocational school because they do
not have enough money for entering their children to the tertiary education.
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Third, the students are ready to work after they graduate by having a specialization major if they can not continue to tertiary education. Fourth, by
entering vocational school, the education ministry can increase the size of the labor force that is ready to work.
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Regarding the problem above, the government also constructs the curriculum for vocational school. Curriculum which is used in Indonesia today
is KTSP curriculum Kurikulum Tingkat Satuan Pendidikan or school-based curriculum. KTSP curriculum is an operational curriculum which is arranged
and implemented by schools. Meanwhile, there is a difference between KTSP curriculum with the previous curriculum. In KTSP curriculum, school has to be
able in defining the content based standard which has been stated by BSNP Badan Satuan Nasional Pendidikan becoming a good curriculum; that is
relevant to the situation, vision, and mission of the school. In addition, the implementation of the content based standard has an aim for students in
achieving the passing standard competence.
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The aim of KTSP curriculum for vocational schools is to develop intelligence, knowledge,
character, well behavior, students’ capability for living independently, and preparation for higher education based on certain
major that students have taken. Besides, it also supposes to students in having a good capability of each profession
based on students’ major, to develop students’ skills and creativity, to acquire their own major and a basic
knowledge and a technology, and to communicate effectively based on certain
50
David Newhouse and Daniel Suryadarma, The Value of Vocational Education High School Type and Labor Market Outcomes in Indonesia: The World Bank Human Development
Network Social Protection and Labor Division, Policy Research Working Paper, 5035, 2009, p. 5.
51
Ibid., p. 10.
52
Ibid., p. 6.
53
Sudira,op.cit., p. 14.