Factors That Affect the Quality Status of Vocational High Schools

Abstract

In Indonesia a huge number of students prefer enrolling in general high school (SMA) over vocational high school (SMK), yet the government want more students (70%) enrolled in vocational high school. This article was aimed at investigating the effects of student gross retention rate, quality of teachers, student self-efficacy and condition of infrastructure on schools’ quality status. Factor analysis was used to determine the influence of each factor on the quality of the school. Data was extracted from Indonesia Center for Education Data and Statistics (MoEC). The research population was made up of 13236 vocational schools. A purposive sample of 34 provincial clusters was deliberately selected. It was found that, there was an association between the quality of a school and state of the school infrastructure. Students self-efficacy had a strong influence on students’ high school enrollment decisions. The government should increase the infrastructure budget for the vocational schools (SMKs), help schools to mobilize capital development funds as well as help fight negative publicity affecting vocational schools. Keywords—quality vocational school; TVET; quality infrastructure