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HP has highlighted a series of initiatives to improve Indonesia’s human capital, one of the ten national priorities to advance the “Making Indonesia 4.0” plan.
The initiatives were highlighted at the recent fourth national convention of Perkumpulan Sekolah SPK Indonesia (Associations of SPK School Indonesia).
Several product offerings were demonstrated to local educators, including innovations designed to enhance project based learning through the use of augmented and virtual reality.
An HP School Pack was also introduced, which offers educators tools designed to enhance the educational experience, including an application, HP Classroom Manager, that enables educators to manage devices in the classroom and design study plans for better learning outcomes.
While such tools are useful for educators to improve educational outcomes through technology, the vendor also highlighted equally important attributes for educational success, including possessing local knowledge and culture, and leveraging partnerships.
“Indonesia has an abundance of human capital that has yet to reach its full potential,” said Hendry Widjaja, chief operating officer of HP Indonesia. “The future workforce requires improved learning to better prepare for their future work-life.
“Technology enables the expansion of learning beyond the classroom, encouraging creativity, collaboration, and participation. HP creates technology solutions that support engaging, personalised education experiences for students, parents, and educators."
As an increasing number of Indonesians enter the workforce, local productivity will also increase, however, to ensure this demographic advantage does not go to waste and is leveraged to its full potential, more investment is needed to prepare this workforce through the use of technology to train and provide the workforce with competitive skill sets.
The main impediment to growth for Indonesia is human capital development, and providing its expanding workforce with sufficient training to prepare its workforce with competitive skill sets.
To do this, the government of Indonesia has identified education curriculum reform as one of the ways to improve the human capital quality.
The national education technology readiness assessment from HP identified a high demand for technology in education amongst Indonesians, both as a tool for teaching and learning.
The results of this assessment highlighted that 99 per cent of students were optimistic about their future and agreed that computers and technology would help improve their learning experience and productivity.
Furthermore, 97 per cent of students believed acquiring computer and technology skills would better prepare them for future jobs.
For teachers, 99 per cent believed technology would have a greater impact on students learning, however, they also felt that in addition to enhancing their learning experience, it would be an important skill for students to possess to be better prepared for the future
Lastly, the assessment found that 97 per cent of parents in Indonesia agreed that technology should play a larger role in their children’s everyday education to enable them to compete with those from other countries.
However, only 37 per cent thought that the local public schools were well-equipped with technology to facilitate such an education.
Based on these results, the report made a number of recommendations for ways in which technology can be used to effectively improve the quality of learning in Indonesia, including improvements in teacher empowerment, quality in education, equitable access, and youth employment.
Due to continued restructuring efforts, the vendor is expected to reduce regional staff through to the end of fiscal 2019; the result of the 2015 split that saw Hewlett-Packard Co split into HP and Hewlett-Packard Enterprise.
