12 • Accommodate diversity of quality in education: disseminate quality equivalence among RPL
providers, whereby IQF can be used as a common language to gauge quality, and integrate QA to develop trust and confidence of the program.
Skills sector: • Improving job qualifications and competence: support recognition of in-house training, work
based in industries and relevant training providers, using IQF as a guidelines; • Career development program: recognize informal or experiential learning of individual
employee, hence increase opportunity to distinguish individual achievement and competency based outcomes; and
• Recruitment system: recognize different competencies obtained through formal, informal, and non formal pathway, as well as professional certification outside the workplace.
2.4.2 RPL in higher education
In Indonesia a common conversion model is implemented by recognizing a student’s previous academic standing by the receiving institution. In its current practice this type of RPL like may be closely
categorized as a credit earning model. Some common characteristics of the practiced procedure can be identified as follows,
• credit transfer is applicable for courses with the same title and curricula, offered by the same kind of study program;
• the number of credits transferred should not exceed 70 of the total credit earned in the previous study program; and
• a ‘conversion program’ is mandatory in the receiving private institutions and they choose only students originated from institutions with higher quality status.
This RPL-like practice is not officially termed as RPL and is only adopted by individual institutions. In a similar manner, conversion programs from the vocational to academic stream, mostly from D3 to S1
programs, are also commonly conducted among institutions. This recognition model can also be categorized as an ‘unofficial’ RPL-like process since the characteristics of learning in the D3 program are
much different compare to S1. In most cases the receiving institutions conduct local assessment to determine the total credit and courses could be transferred to the S1 pro.
2.4.3 RPL initiatives
Although RPL has been widely practiced in many industries to recognize an employee’s competencies for hisher career promotion, a national standard procedure is relatively new for Indonesia. The recent
initiative to implement RPL in Indonesia aims to widen education access by providing the opportunity for employed workers to pursue a further qualification by reentering formal higher education. Their
prior experiences could be assessed to gain exemption from some or all of study program requirements.
In line with the development of IQF in the education sector, MoRTHE has developed an initial idea on RPL to accommodate a life-long learning scheme to facilitate the recognition of people with relevant
employment experience as qualified lecturers, enabling them to work in higher education. Thus, for example, workers who graduated from vocational programs D1, D2 and D3 and HS High School or
VHS Vocational High School leavers who would seek further education will be assessed. Through RPL learning from their prior working experiences can be assessed with a view to granting exemptions in
entry requirement into higher level of education for D1, D2, HS and VHS graduates: as well as to waive relevant courses for D3 graduates, as illustrated in Figure-5. Also as mentioned in section 2.3.2, in the
13 skills sector, the Government Regulation 312006 established the national skill training system
Sislatkernas.
8 7
6 5
4 3
2 1
9
PROFESSION SPECIALIST
VOCATIONAL HIGH
SCHOOL
LEARNING PROGRESS IN SKILLS AND CAREER DEVELOPMENT
LEARNING PROGRESS IN
SCIENTIFIC DEVELOPMENT
S3 S2
S1
GENERAL HIGH
SCHOOL
D4 D3
D2 D1
S3 S2
RPL PROGRAM FOR LIFE LONG
LEARNING
WORKING EXPERIENCE
H S,
V H
S ,
D 1
, D
2 ,
D 3
g ra
d u
a te
s
D ir
e ct
ly e
n te
ri n
g w
o rk
p la
ce
Assessment of working
experiences Exemption awarded to
HS, VHS, D1, D2, D3 graduates Course waivers
Figure-5: Implementation of RPL in formal education In 2013, the Directorate of Learning and Student Affairs DLSA
7
launched a pilot program in selected study programs in public polytechnics. The study programs presented in Table-5 were selected in a
competitive manner based on their management capacity to undertake the program. Evaluation after one year shows that in general the results have not been as expected, and a significant effort is still
needed to improve the design and implementation mechanism in the future.
Study program Institution
Study program Institution
D4 Civil Engineering Politeknik Negeri Bandung
D3 Fishery Culture Politeknik Negeri Lampung
D4 Informatics Politeknik Negeri Bandung
D3 Civil Engineering Politeknik Negeri Sriwijaya
D4 Mechanical Engineering Politeknik Negeri Bandung
D4 MICE Politeknik Negeri Jakarta
D3 Informatics Politeknik Negeri Batam
D3 Hotel Management Politeknik Negeri Bali D3 Automotive
Politeknik Negeri Banjarmasin
Table-5: Study programs selected as pilots Similar procedures are applicable for supporting improvement in the qualification levels of faculty
members who apply for higher status faculty membership. A more important benefit, as mentioned above, lies in capitalizing the expertise of industrial practitioners who, without an RPL procedure, will
not be eligible to become lecturers in vocational programs. In order to facilitate RPL implementation in higher education, the MoEC Regulation 732013 was issued. The Regulation promotes RPL for life-long
learning and facilitates RPL for recognizing professionals with qualifications at IQF levels 8 and 9 to become lecturers. However, an operational guideline to recognize individual’s expertise and assign them
in the institution’s personnel system is required.
7
Now the Directorate General of Learning and Student Affairs DG LSA
14 The MoEC decree 732013 is explicit on the requirements for study programs to be eligible to offer RPL
assessment, • acquire accreditation status at least B by BAN-PT or equivalent international accreditation
agencies for at least 2 two consecutive years, and maintained the rating when submitting the proposal;
• graduates are employed or self employed, as demonstrated by the most recent tracer studies conducted;
• recommended by the relevant professional associations; and • passed the portfolio test conducted by independent panel of experts on behalf of the MoRTHE.
2.5 Defining learning outcomes
