A DAP lawmaker has questioned whether money allocated for teacher development will go into more investments in information technology.

 

Bukit Bendera MP Zairil Khir Johari said according to budget estimates, it seemed that the extra funds from the slashed teacher development budget, have gone to “strengthening education operations,” a category that has received a RM288 million increase, from RM609 million this year to RM897 million next year.

 

“Of this amount, RM615 million is allocated for ‘information technology’, representing a huge increase of RM200 million from the year before,” said Zairil.

 

Urging the the Education Ministry to clarify the issue immediately, he said: “If it is true that the government intends to sacrifice teacher development for the sake of more investments in information technology, then they are seriously misguided.

 

“As the examples in the United Kingdom have proven, even the best technology cannot improve learning outcomes if the teachers are not motivated and competent enough,” he said.

 

Zairil had earlier cited the Federal Expenditure Estimates 2015, where the total allocation for the “professional development” of teachers was slashed from RM1.54 billion this year to RM961 million in 2015.

 

“This equates to a huge reduction of around RM600 million,” Zairil said.

 

The DAP parliamentarian said the drastic reduction in allocation for teacher development was “shocking”, especially since the Education Ministry’s budget saw an increase from RM54.6 billion to RM56.6 million.

 

Quality of teachers

Commenting on the 1Bestari Net project, Zairil suggested that the most important factor for the system to work is the quality of teachers.

 

“If teachers are so critical, why has their development budget been slashed?” queried Zairil. 

 

The budget for “professional development”, which is split into three categories, will see the budgets of all three categories cut.

 

For “pre-service training,” allocation has been reduced from RM948 million in 2014 to RM851 million next year.

 

Meanwhile, “leadership training” is getting cut from RM181 million to RM62 million.

 

“The most drastic reduction, however, is in ‘in-service training’, which is only getting RM48 million next year compared to RM410 million previously,” Zairil said.

 

Zairil, however, said he had noticed a new expenditure item in the budget called “Transformation of Education Service Officers” which will receive RM250 million for 2015.

 

“It is not obvious whether this programme involves the development of teachers, but assuming it does, it would only bring the total budget for professional development to RM1.21 billion.

 

“This still produces a shortfall of RM350 million compared to the RM1.54 billion allocated in Budget 2014”.

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