The Education National Key Economic Area (NKEA) has identified 13 entry point projects (EPPs) to raise overall education standards and deliver significant results within ten years.

The projects are expected to raise total gross national income contribution by RM34 billion to RM61 billion by 2020, the NKEA Laboratory on Education said at the Economic Transformation Programme Open Day in Kuala Lumpur today.

The education NKEA focuses on strenthening the private education services sector by increasing private consumption and investments as well as expanding education export.

rais yatim akademi seni convocation 211206 graduate As public sector growth is expected to be limited, the aim requires private education sector to grow sixfold and this will need RM20 billion in funding over the next 10 years, of which only six per cent constitutes new public funding.

Also, an additional 536,000 jobs will be created, with the majority of them in professional and technical fields and to triple foreign student enrolment from 70,000 now to 200,000 by 2020.

The EPPs identified: scaling up early childcare and education centres, improving early childcare and education training centres, boosting international schools, expanding private teacher training and increasing skills training provision.

Other EPPs under education NKEA are: building Islamic finance and business education discipline cluster, building a health sciences education discipline cluster, building an advanced engineering, science and innovation discipline cluster, building a hospitality and tourism discipline cluster, launching EduCity at Iskandar Malaysia, championing Malaysia's international education brand and introducing public-private partnerships in basic education.

The NKEA laboratories involved participants from over 200 private sector companies, government ministries, agencies, regulatory bodies and non-governmental organisations.

It is a follow-up to the workshop convened in May, during which a consensus on key growth sectors were achieved.

- Bernama