Indonesia has a serious issue as far as meeting the challenges of the Fourth Industrial Revolution go. The quickly evolving landscape and potential demands on the country’s workforce is shaping into a real concern.

The youth have often been pitted as Cambodia’s greatest asset especially in the face of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, also known as Industry 4.0. According to the Central Intelligence Agency’s (CIA) World Factbook, 30.8 percent of Cambodia’s population is made up of people between the ages of zero to 14 years, 17.8 percent is made up of those between 15 to 24 years, and 41.1 percent is made up of those between the ages of 25 to 54 years.

Early in October last year, Thailand’s cabinet at the time approved the transfer of three senior head officials from the country’s Ministry of Education following a probe into alleged malfeasance in relation to the construction of the Songkhla Lake Aquaculture Research Centre, an aquarium and marine research centre in the southern province of Songkhla.Earlier in March, an embezzlement scandal going back to 2008 involving scholarships from the Sema Phatthana Chiwit Fund worth US$3.7 million wa

The ASEAN Post recently published an article entitled “Empty bellies in Lao” which highlighted the serious and persisting issue of malnutrition among Laotian children. One of the main reasons malnutrition has become an issue in Lao for a long time now is that the country is poor.

Higher education rankings provide a shorthand list of institutions that may provide prospective students and parents with some information on what they’re looking for from a university.

Recently The ASEAN Post published two articles on Save the Children’s Global Childhood Report 2019. One talked about how Singapore, for the second year in a row, managed to grab the number one spot for providing a safe and nurturing environment for children. The other article was about how Lao not only performed the worst in the region on that front, but also performed badly worldwide.

Singapore’s Education Minister Ong Ye Kung revealed last year that the government there intends to bring in foreign talent in areas critical to Industry 4.0. Ong said that meanwhile, the country will work on rebalancing its education system to meet future demand.

Lao is looking to improve its education system. In this effort, it is introducing a project called the “Inclusive, Child-friendly Environments and the Improvement of the Quality of Learning Outcomes of pre-and primary schools in Vientiane and Oudomxay provinces”.

The Fourth Industrial Revolution is a train that you either get on or you’ll find yourself being left far, far behind. ASEAN is aware of this. We’ve seen countries like Indonesia and Thailand take lessons from Germany’s model of a 4.0 economy. We’ve also seen countries like Malaysia invest large sums of money on the expansion of information technology (IT) infrastructure to provide an enabling environment for the growth of the digital economy.

During its campaigning before the 14th general election (GE14) in Malaysia, the Alliance of Hope (Pakatan Harapan) declared in its manifesto that the coalition would recognise the Unified Examination Certificate (UEC) qualification if they were elected into power. Almost a year has passed since coming into power, but that promise has yet to be fulfilled by the new government.