High performing schools all from W Malaysia

 Not even one school from the whole of East Malaysia made it to the Education Ministry's recently announced list of high-performance schools.

In response, the Sabah State Education Department (SED) is compiling a list of relatively high-performing schools in the state for the ministry's consideration.

This request for the list was disclosed by Masidi Manjun, Minister-in-charge of Education, who conveyed the state government's request to the SED, a federal department.

"Going by the outcome of the selection process, we can only assume that none of the government schools in Sabah merit the status of high-performance schools at this point in time," lamented Masidi (right).

There are were rumblings in Sabah and Sarawak over this ‘slight'. Deputy Education Minister Wee Ka Siong had to make a hastily arranged trip to Kota Kinabalu yesterday to soothe ruffled feathers.

He said that more schools would be named on the list next year and in 2012. He ,however, did not say how this would affect schools in Sabah and Sarawak.

"This year we are listing 20 schools, next year 30 and more the following year. This year is just the first phase. Another list would be announced in February."

Benchmark criteria emphasised

Wee conceded that some of the schools in Sabah and Sarawak are very good.

"But it is more about the average grades of the schools. This is the main criteria. The quality the of the students must be such they become the benchmark for other schools."

Grades aside, Wee pointed out that high performance schools also need to create distinctive personalities, win national and international awards, form relationships with institutions of higher learning, cultivate a strong bond with the local community and form a solid network with local and international institutions both within and outside the country.

Wee (left)dispelled the notion that schools in the peninsula automatically qualified for high performance rankings because they had the best infrastructure and facilities.

Schools in East Malaysia are notoriously lagging behind in both areas, as well as in the number of teachers with adequate training and experience.

The deputy minister urged schools in Sabah and Sarawak not to give up but instead "start preparing themselves now so that they would qualify in the next round or two."

The Education Ministry denies that the 20 high-performance schools selected so far, are elite institutions.

Every school in the country has an opportunity to compete on an even playing field to be recognised as a high-performance school, according to the Ministry.

Mulling over situation

Half the 20 schools listed are fully-residential government schools, another four are day secondary schools and the remainder, primary schools.

Privately, the word from Putrajaya is that the Education Ministry is mulling over the possibility of creating another category, ‘excellent schools', so that Sabah and Sarawak would stand a chance when the 10,000 government schools in the country are ranked again.

Wee did not comment on the proposal.

The Education Ministry plans to monitor and supervise those schools presently languishing at the bottom of the league. Some east Malaysians see this as somewhat adding insult to injury.

Masidi, who is also State Minister for Tourism, Culture and Environment, pledged that he would continue to monitor the academic performance and co-curricular achievements of Sabah schools.

His ministry would act as an oversight body to ensure that local schools are not inadvertently excluded when it comes to the selection of high-performance schools in the country.

"We believe that there are mechanisms to detect the performance of teachers and their failure to meet expectations.

"We can actually check them through their work performance," explained Masidi. "For instance, if many students of a geography teacher fail, that means he or she did not perform his or her duties well."

Even so, Masidi acknowledged that Sabah is also obviously behind West Malaysia generally in terms of educational facilities.

Naturally, this makes it tougher for most schools to match their counterparts there.

As a case in point he revealed that many schools in Sabah do not have computer laboratories.

This follows the failure of the contractors engaged by the Education Ministry in Putrajaya to complete their contracts.

"It is best to offer such projects to local contractors. They know the situation in the state, will get the job done as a result and above all they will be able to work within the budget," said Masidi.

There are also cases, according to Masidi, of contractors completing their school computer projects without electricity supply and phone lines to connect to the internet.