How to Become a JPK Accredited Centre in Malaysia (2026): SKM Certification, the December 2025 Act 652 Amendment and the Three Routes to a Malaysian Skills Certificate for Foreign-Invested Employers

A Chinese battery maker opens a plant in Kedah and needs 200 technicians. A Shenzhen vocational-education group wants to run courses in Selangor. A Penang electronics subsidiary wants its best Malaysian line leaders to hold a recognised credential before it writes them into an Employment Pass succession plan. All three end up at the same office: the Department of Skills Development (Jabatan Pembangunan Kemahiran, JPK) under the Ministry of Human Resources, and the Malaysian Skills Certificate system it runs under the National Skills Development Act 2006 (Act 652). Parliament amended that Act in December 2025, extending the certificate ladder above Level 5 and changing how long an accreditation lasts. This guide explains the system end to end: what an SKM is, the three routes to one, how a training centre becomes accredited, what the 2025 amendment changed, and how a foreign-invested company should actually use it.

What JPK does, and why a foreign investor runs into it

Malaysia runs two separate qualification tracks. Academic diplomas and degrees go through the Ministry of Higher Education and the Malaysian Qualifications Agency. Occupational skills — welding, CNC machining, electrical installation, mechatronics, food processing, beauty therapy, logistics operations and hundreds more — go through JPK. The certificate JPK awards is the Sijil Kemahiran Malaysia (SKM), and every SKM is assessed against a National Occupational Skills Standard (NOSS): a document, written with industry, that sets out what a competent worker at a given level can actually do.

For a foreign investor the relevance is practical rather than academic. Malaysia is betting heavily on technical and vocational education and training (TVET) to staff the factories it is courting. On 12 May 2026, at a Malaysia–China forum on electric vehicle, battery and new energy talent, Deputy Prime Minister Ahmad Zahid Hamidi described TVET as the country's "first line of readiness" for future industries, reported national TVET graduate employability of 95.9% in 2025 (up from 95.6% in 2024), and said the Malaysia-China Institute's development cost would exceed RM500 million on full completion. The workforce you hire in Malaysia will increasingly carry SKM credentials, and the government expects investors to take part in producing them.

The certification ladder, from Level 1 to Level 8

Until the 2025 amendment, JPK certified only up to Level 5. The levels are cumulative: a candidate normally holds the level below before being certified at the next, and each level is tied to specific NOSS competencies rather than to hours spent in a classroom.

What the December 2025 amendment changed

The Dewan Rakyat passed two skills bills on 3 December 2025 — the National Skills Development (Amendment) Bill 2025 and the Skills Development Fund (Amendment) Bill 2025 — and the Dewan Negara approved them on 16 December 2025. Human Resources Minister Steven Sim framed the reform around a quality problem: students paying for vocational courses that turned out to be poor, wasting time and taking on debt without a job at the end. The changes that matter to employers and training providers are these:

• A longer ladder. Certification now extends beyond Level 5, so a senior technician or master craftsperson can be recognised at the same tier as a graduate or postgraduate, rather than topping out at DLKM.
• Longer accreditation for good centres. Accreditation of a training centre moves from a three-year period to up to six years, linked to performance. For a serious provider this halves the renewal burden; for a weak one it does not.
• Clearer suspension and cancellation. The amendment sets out a more transparent mechanism for suspending or cancelling non-compliant centres — the other side of the longer accreditation.
• A broader council. The National Skills Development Council (MPKK) now brings in the Ministry of Investment, Trade and Industry (MITI), the Ministry of Rural and Regional Development, the Ministry of Women, Family and Community Development, and the Malaysia Board of Technologists (MBOT). MITI's seat matters: it links the skills standards to the investment agenda.
• Wider financing. The companion amendment to the Skills Development Fund Act widens what the Skills Development Fund Corporation (PTPK) can finance, extending loans and assistance to other JPK-recognised training programmes.

Since 2006, about 2.5 million Malaysians have been certified through SKM, DKM and DLKM. The amendment is less about volume than about making the top of that pool visible to employers.

Three routes to an SKM

There are three ways to reach a Malaysian Skills Certificate, and a foreign-invested employer will usually use more than one of them.

PPT is the route most foreign-owned companies underuse. If you already employ Malaysian technicians who have been running your machines for years, PPT turns that experience into a nationally recognised credential without taking them off the line for a year. The work is in assembling the evidence — job records, supervisor attestations, samples of work — in the shape the NOSS demands.

SLDN is the route that makes most sense for a new plant. Because most of the training happens on your own premises, the apprentice learns your equipment and your process, and the certificate at the end is still a national one. The trade-off is that your company takes on real responsibilities as the workplace training provider.

How a training centre becomes JPK-accredited

Accreditation is not a single licence for a building. It is granted to a centre for a specific programme at a specific level, based on a specific NOSS. A centre accredited for SKM Level 2 in electrical installation is not thereby accredited for Level 3, or for welding. Plan the scope before you plan the premises.

1. Set up the operating entity. Register the business with the relevant Malaysian authority. For a foreign-owned provider this is usually a Sdn. Bhd.; see our step-by-step incorporation guide.
2. Choose the NOSS and level. Identify the exact occupational standard and level you will deliver. Everything downstream — equipment, staff, floor space — is sized against it.
3. Secure compliant premises. The training premises need local authority approval and must meet safety requirements for the trade being taught. A workshop for welding and a classroom for logistics have very different fit-outs.
4. Equip against the NOSS. Tools, machines and consumables must match what the standard requires the candidate to demonstrate, in working order and in sufficient quantity for the intake.
5. Qualify your people. The centre needs certified personnel — the centre manager, assessors and verifiers — and JPK requires them to complete its induction course (Kursus Induksi) for the relevant roles.
6. Apply and be audited. The application is assessed, and JPK inspects the centre before accrediting the programme.
7. Operate under verification. Once accredited, assessment results are verified and the centre remains subject to monitoring. Under the amended Act, the length of accreditation depends on performance, and the suspension and cancellation route is now clearer.

Using SKM inside a foreign-invested company

Most of our clients are not trying to become training businesses. They are employers who need a certified Malaysian workforce and want the process to support, rather than compete with, their other obligations. SKM connects to three of them.

The HRD Corp levy. A company with ten or more Malaysian employees in a covered sector pays a monthly levy, generally 1% of those employees' wages, to HRD Corp. That levy is money you can recover by funding approved training. Training delivered by a provider that is both HRD Corp-registered and JPK-accredited lets the same spend produce a claim and a national certificate. Our HRD Corp levy guide explains which schemes pay what.

Local hiring before an Employment Pass. Before ESD looks at an Employment Pass application, the system expects you to have tried to hire locally. A credible plan to train and certify Malaysians for technical roles is the strongest answer to the question every approving officer asks: why can this job not be done by a Malaysian? See our guide to Section 45F, MYFutureJobs and Section 60K.

Succession plans. Employment Pass renewals for mid-tier roles increasingly depend on showing that a Malaysian understudy is being developed. A named employee progressing from SKM Level 3 to DKM is concrete evidence in a way that an internal training log is not. Our Employment Pass guide covers the June 2026 salary tiers and duration limits.

Where foreign-invested companies go wrong

• Treating accreditation as a one-time licence. Accreditation is per programme and per level. Expanding into a new trade or a higher level is a new accreditation exercise.
• Buying equipment before choosing the NOSS. The standard dictates the tools. Equipment bought from a Chinese curriculum that does not match the Malaysian NOSS will not count at audit.
• Ignoring PPT. Companies send experienced technicians through full programmes they do not need, when a well-prepared PPT portfolio would certify them faster and cheaper.
• Assuming Chinese certificates transfer. A Chinese vocational qualification is not an SKM. Cross-recognition initiatives exist and are growing, but a Malaysian employer, client or regulator asking for SKM wants an SKM.
• Relying on amendments before commencement. Build plans around the Level 6–8 certificates and the six-year accreditation only after confirming the relevant provision is in force.
• Keeping training out of the immigration file. The best evidence for Employment Pass approvals and renewals is often sitting in the training department, unused.

A practical decision guide

The skills system is one of the few parts of Malaysian regulation that rewards investors for doing something they need to do anyway. Get the scope right, use PPT and dual training where they fit, and connect the result to your levy claims and your immigration file.

ONEKEY BIZ helps foreign-invested companies and training providers with JPK accredited centre applications, NOSS programme accreditation, PPT certification for existing staff, and the company setup that comes before them. If you are planning a plant, a training centre or an Employment Pass pipeline in Malaysia, talk to us before you commit to premises or equipment.

This article is general information only, not legal, tax or immigration advice. Policies, thresholds and official fees are set by the relevant Malaysian authorities and may change. Talk to our consultants about your specific situation.