Still lots to be done about education blueprint
Institute for Democracy and Economic Affairs (Ideas)Published: Jun 24, 2014 6:31 AM | Updated: Jun 24, 2014 6:34 AM
Last week Muhyiddin Yassin released the first annual report that tracks the implementation of the Malaysian Education Blueprint 2013-2025. The report outlines key achievements, challenges, and future plans and targets in implementing the blueprint.
We congratulate the Education Ministry for the successes they have achieved. Many of the blueprint’s initiatives are innovative and are showing improvements.
For example, the District Transformation Programme in Sabah and Kedah seem to have delivered some improvements in school grade point average scores, an increase of 0.07 and 0.06 points respectively. This means there is an improvement in education equity, as schools in rural areas are improving.
We are also happy to see increased innovation to ensure all children can receive an education. Over the last year, three more schools have been added into the Sekolah Dalam Hospital programme, and, a school for children without documents has been established in Chow Kit. These are positive steps towards ensuring education for all.
However we are concerned that access at the preschool level fell well short of the targeted 88 percent for 2013, only managing to increase from 80.5 percent in 2012 to 81.7 percent in 2013.
We are also concerned about the literacy rates in our schools. The government targeted to achieve 67 percent literacy in English and 90 percent for Bahasa Malaysia for Year One students. But we only achieved 63.3 percent and 81.3 percent respectively.
In Ideas’ nationwide education survey of the bottom 40 percent, we found that poor parents want their children to be proficient in English. This is understandable because English proficiency could be a tool to move them out of poverty. To ensure these children are proficient in the language, obviously we need teachers who are proficient in English. But this annual report shows a worrying state.
Only 8.2 percent of our English teachers achieved the top (C2) score in their English proficiency test, with the vast majority (64.23 percent) achieved only the middle level (B2) scores or below. Unless something drastic is done to push up the proficiency of our teachers, children from poor families will not achieve their dreams.
We welcome the publication of the names of the ten schools that performed best in the last Programme for International Student Assessment (Pisa) test. The ministry is still keeping the full list secret, but at least the release of this small amount of data indicates a change in attitude.
It is interesting to note that the best performer is a private school, and the majority of the rest are all schools that enjoy a higher degree of autonomy. This confirms the observation Ideas recorded in our Yayasan Sime Darby-funded research ‘From Average to Excellent’ that autonomy is a key ingredient in school transformation.
In an interview before the release of the report, Education Minister II Idris Jusoh envisions that within two years students from private schools will be returning to public schools. This is a bold statement to make and we feel the possibility of this happening in significant numbers is almost zero. But, if the ministry wants to make even just one step in that direction, then they should look seriously at ways to devolve more authority to schools and give them more autonomy.
The Institute for Democracy and Economic Affairs (Ideas) is a Malaysian libertarian think-tank dedicated to promoting market-based solutions to public policy challenges.
We congratulate the Education Ministry for the successes they have achieved. Many of the blueprint’s initiatives are innovative and are showing improvements.
For example, the District Transformation Programme in Sabah and Kedah seem to have delivered some improvements in school grade point average scores, an increase of 0.07 and 0.06 points respectively. This means there is an improvement in education equity, as schools in rural areas are improving.
We are also happy to see increased innovation to ensure all children can receive an education. Over the last year, three more schools have been added into the Sekolah Dalam Hospital programme, and, a school for children without documents has been established in Chow Kit. These are positive steps towards ensuring education for all.
However we are concerned that access at the preschool level fell well short of the targeted 88 percent for 2013, only managing to increase from 80.5 percent in 2012 to 81.7 percent in 2013.
We are also concerned about the literacy rates in our schools. The government targeted to achieve 67 percent literacy in English and 90 percent for Bahasa Malaysia for Year One students. But we only achieved 63.3 percent and 81.3 percent respectively.
In Ideas’ nationwide education survey of the bottom 40 percent, we found that poor parents want their children to be proficient in English. This is understandable because English proficiency could be a tool to move them out of poverty. To ensure these children are proficient in the language, obviously we need teachers who are proficient in English. But this annual report shows a worrying state.
Only 8.2 percent of our English teachers achieved the top (C2) score in their English proficiency test, with the vast majority (64.23 percent) achieved only the middle level (B2) scores or below. Unless something drastic is done to push up the proficiency of our teachers, children from poor families will not achieve their dreams.
We welcome the publication of the names of the ten schools that performed best in the last Programme for International Student Assessment (Pisa) test. The ministry is still keeping the full list secret, but at least the release of this small amount of data indicates a change in attitude.
It is interesting to note that the best performer is a private school, and the majority of the rest are all schools that enjoy a higher degree of autonomy. This confirms the observation Ideas recorded in our Yayasan Sime Darby-funded research ‘From Average to Excellent’ that autonomy is a key ingredient in school transformation.
In an interview before the release of the report, Education Minister II Idris Jusoh envisions that within two years students from private schools will be returning to public schools. This is a bold statement to make and we feel the possibility of this happening in significant numbers is almost zero. But, if the ministry wants to make even just one step in that direction, then they should look seriously at ways to devolve more authority to schools and give them more autonomy.
The Institute for Democracy and Economic Affairs (Ideas) is a Malaysian libertarian think-tank dedicated to promoting market-based solutions to public policy challenges.
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