School leavers should be encouraged to join ILP: Kulasegaran

IPOH: The Human Resource Ministry will be working with the Education Ministry to encourage more school leavers to join Industrial Training Institutes (ILP), as most of the students managed to find employment after graduating.
Minister M. Kulasegaran said the people, especially school leavers, needed to change their perception on ILP's programme which was labelled as "not up to the mark".
"The perception that joining such institutions will dirty one's hands must be changed.
"They don't realise that almost all the ILP students get jobs, even law students don't always get jobs when they finish their studies," he told reporters after a dialogue session with industry players on skill training at the Ipoh Industrial Training Institute, here today.
Kulasegaran added that students who did not perform well in their studies after Form Three should be referred to enrol in such institutions.
"There is no point to ask them to study up to Form Five, when they show no interest in academics.
"Thus allowing them to take up skill based courses, will bring more benefits to them in the near future," he said.
According to Kulasegaran, there are 32 ILPs nationwide and some are under-utilised such as the Ipoh facility which only has 491 students despite having a capacity for 900.
Kulasegaran added that he wanted to make ILPs more accessible and open to the public in order to attract higher enrolment.
He said students and parents alike needed to know the opportunities offered by these training institutes. — Bernama