In this research, free and forced vibrations of the functionally graded material (FGM) sandwich beams are investigated by using the scaled boundary finite element method (SBFEM). The innovation of this method is that the discretization only exists in the axial direction of the beam, which reduces the spatial dimension of problem by one, the time-consuming mesh generation processes are greatly reduced. The homogeneous second-order differential equations of the beams are derived by the method of virtual work principle with the radial coordinates as independent variables, which realizes the characteristics of the FGM changing along the radial direction. By using the state space method and the Padé series expansion method, the governing equations are further solved analytically, and the mass and stiffness matrices of each layer of the FGM sandwich beams are obtained. The combination between layers of the FGM sandwich beams is realized according to continuity conditions of displacement. Therefore, the free and forced vibrations using Newmark time integration method of the FGM sandwich beams are further realized. A special attention is given to two different types of the FGM sandwich beams, one is the beam with FGM face sheets and the other is the beam with FGM core. Three different types of dynamic loadings are considered in the analysis of forced vibration. The convergence of the proposed method for solving the dynamic characteristics of the beams is verified by increasing the order of the higher order spectral elements. In order to prove the numerical stability of the current method for dynamic analysis of the FGM sandwich beams, the frequency of the FGM sandwich beams under various parameters and the transient vertical displacement of the beam loading points under three different loadings are solved. The numerical results of the current method are compared with the results obtained by using different theories in the other literature, which shows a good agreement. In addition, on the basis of the research, the doped FGM core in the uniform core is discussed by using the current method, which provides some guidance for the optimal design of the dynamic characteristics of the beams. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]