Rural students' awareness and interest towards technical education in Malaysia

Abstract

Recently, Malaysian's government stresses the importance of technical education for the sake of nation's development. However, this field is less popular among students in the rural areas. Thus, the purpose of this research is to study on the awareness and interest among secondary school's students ofr)lral areas and also the factors that affect the students' interest. Samples are randomly chosen which comprises of 516 students of Form Four. They are from the Sekolah Menengah Kebangsaan (SMK) Semerah, SMK Y ong Peng, SMK Rengit and SMK Seri Medan which are located in the rural areas of the Batu Paha!. Data is obtained from questionnaire and uses SPSS version 12.0.1 to calculate frequency, percentage and min. Result of the analysis shows that awareness and interest of students towards technical education is at a moderate level. Parents become the strongest factor in affecting students to further their studies in techinical education. Therefore researcher suggests that students, parents, schools and Jabatan Pendidikan Teknikal should communicate better and co-operate in planning for seminars and visits to expose students on technical and vocational studies in order to give encouragement to students.