Managing Student Readiness Pathways in Maritime Vocational Education: Program Design, Tracking, and Institutional Decision-Making from Classroom to Apprenticeship

Abstract

Maritime vocational high schools bear institutional responsibility for managing the pathway that carries adolescent students from classroom instruction through industry apprenticeship (Praktik Kerja Industri) and toward workforce entry or tertiary officer education, yet how these schools actually design, sequence, and manage this pathway as an institutional program, rather than how individual students experience it, remains largely unexamined in Indonesian maritime education research. This study investigates how a maritime vocational high school in Jakarta manages the classroom-to-apprenticeship student readiness pathway, examining program design decisions, industry partnership management, readiness tracking practices, and the institutional decision-making processes that shape placement quality and student outcomes. A qualitative design was employed, drawing on semi-structured interviews and document review with 5 school administrators, 8 curriculum and vocational teachers, and 6 industry partnership coordinators, supplemented by institutional records covering three academic years of Prakerin placement management. Thematic analysis identified four dominant findings: loosely coupled pathway management across curriculum and placement functions, resource-dependent industry partnership governance, informal and inconsistent readiness tracking, and administrative capacity constraints shaping placement quality more than curricular design itself. Findings extend resource dependence theory and institutional linkage theory into Indonesian maritime vocational education and carry direct implications for program management reform, partnership governance, and readiness tracking system design.