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Wednesday, May 20, 2015

THE WORST IS COMING: We haven’t hit rock bottom in education standards YET

THE WORST IS COMING: We haven’t hit rock bottom in education standards YET
I am an educator in active service and I would like to add to the discussion on the decline of our education standards.
Let me start with a positive. Our government has realized, albeit a bit late, that good teachers form the cornerstone of the efforts to nurture our education system back to health.
But let us acknowledge the fact that our education standards have been deteriorating over the years. I fear we have not yet hit rock-bottom.
Like our more illustrious neighbour, Singapore, we have a centralized education system but our Ministry of Education has not taken advantage of this factor. We suffer from the political interference that has been wreaking havoc against what a coherent curriculum ought to have achieved. There has been too much experimentation with our curriculum, and these experiments are not based on sound education theories but the whims and fancies of politicians. This was what happened to the teaching of Science and Mathematics in English. Political considerations forced its cancellation.
If the public examinations results are valid, there can be no reason why our education standards are so low when compared against international norms. Teachers know public examination results have been tweaked so that the government can claim improved examinations results year in and year out.
It really is time to make our public examinations once again have the credibility and validity it ought to have.
Effective school leaders and principals are crucial to sustaining a high-quality teaching workforce and ensuring strong student performance. However, political considerations have been among the factors in determining who gets promoted. Until the ministry adopts the best practices in appointing school leaders, we will not see the benefits of recruiting high-quality people into the teaching profession.
Professional development is very important in ensuring that teachers are kept abreast of current developments and in developing creative innovative teaching strategies. Yet our Education Ministry is giving lip service to this very important component of nurturing a healthy school environment. I can only speak of my own experience: the in-house training programmes are usually an eye wash, all very good in printed form and for reporting to the authorities but lacking in real substance.
I don’t believe that anything I have written here is unknown to the powers-that-be. The only question is whether there really is the political will to improve our education system for Malaysia’s future generations. - FMT

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