AN overhaul of the Malaysian education system would be superficial without first reforming the teaching profession by addressing the quality of teachers, their overwhelming workload, and inconsistent class attendance, said educationists.

National Union of the Teaching Profession secretary-general Harry Tan said Malaysian teachers had long bore the brunt of criticisms, while in truth many within the profession were barely coping with the burden of teaching, administrative work, organising programmes, and participating in events and training.

“Our higher-ups are always telling us that it is our duty to do work; and when we are paid more, we must do more work. We totally agree but the question is – are we doing the right thing?

“Look at indicators of our standing in the world, such as Pisa and TIMSS,” he said, referring to Malaysia’s low standing in the Programme for International Student Assessment and the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study.

Tan said teachers also faced many restrictions and dilemmas on the job, especially when it came to disciplining children.

“If we catch a thief among the students, the right thing to do according to the law is to report to the relevant authorities. But as teachers, our role is to educate so the student grows up as a good citizen.

“Hence the dilemma. With all the restrictions imposed on us, how can we teach discipline? We are not even given proper training on how to handle cases that border on criminal activities,” he said.

Syllabus overhaul

Education Minister Maszlee Malik said today that a meeting had been scheduled between Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad, the National Academic Advisory Council, and the Education Policy Department to discuss ways to reform the education system.

Parent Action Group for Education Malaysia chairman Noor Azimah Abdul Rahim said both the teaching profession and the national syllabus needed to be relooked at.

Noor Azimah said that teachers needed bilingual training, and that English-language remedial classes needed to be reintroduced to students.

Apart from that, she said the teaching and learning of science had to be made more exciting by scaling up inquiry-based science education.

“More hours should be spent on science experiments and mathematics practice too.”

Azimah also said the national STEM centre needs to be developed.

The centre was intended to be an “umbrella” for the learning of science, technology, engineering and mathematics from preschool to the PhD level.

But after it was set up, the centre has been limited to scaling up inquiry-based science education due to funding constraints, she said.

Tan, on the other hand, said changing the syllabus should not be a priority as the existing primary and secondary national curricula were “well-thought of”.

Instead, he said policymakers should not politicise education if they hoped to truly reform the system.

“What our education system needs is not politicians, but education reformists. We see that our new minister is trying very hard to revamp the way things have been done in the past.

“(But) if the top is not in sync with the bottom, the practitioners, magic will not happen in the classroom.” – November 13, 2018.