2.0 ACADEMIC ESSAY

2.1 Efforts to Improve Teacher Quality and its Challenge

International research shows that teacher quality is the most significant school-

based factor in determining student outcomes. While there are certainly many excellent

teachers in the Malaysian education system, a 2011 research by AKEPT found that only

50% of lessons are being delivered in an effective manner. This means that the lessons

did not sufficiently engage students, and followed a more passive, lecture format of

content delivery. These lessons focused on achieving surface-level content

understanding, instead of higher-order thinking skills. This statistic is particularly

challenging as an estimated 60% of today’s teachers will still be teaching in 20 years’

time. Therefore, it is important for the Ministry of Education to improve the quality of

teacher as the situation will surely affect the future of education in Malaysia.

Teaching will be a prestigious, elite profession that only recruits from the top 30%

of graduates in the country. Teachers will receive the best training possible, from the

time they enter their teacher training programmes, through to the point of retirement.

They will have access to exciting career development opportunities across several

distinct pathways, with progression based on competency and performance, not tenure.

There will be a peer-led culture of excellence wherein teachers mentor one another,

develop and share best practices and hold their peers accountable for meeting

professional standards. However, there are some teachers who think about leaving the

career at an earlier stage even though they have been given too many opportunities in

the profession. They are willing enough to be excluded from retirement plan as long as

they can be free from the teaching profession despite their good performance. This is

indeed a loss since we could use a lot more teachers who are capable in the profession.

In the future, only the best candidates will be recruited as teachers. This means

that the Ministry will rigorously enforce entry standards to ensure that 100% of every

teacher training intake meets the minimum academic requirement. The Ministry will

ensure that the same standards are put in place in the teacher training programmes in

Public and Private Higher Education Institutions (IPT). Additionally, the Ministry will

ensure that the quality of the curriculum and lecturers are upgraded to deliver the kind

of teachers desired. The Ministry will also introduce more stringent graduation

requirements so that only the best trainees can graduate and be guaranteed placement

in Malaysian schools. This is all because of the needs to improve teacher quality in

Malaysia. A person must already show high performance since before he was first

selected as a trainee teacher to be eligible in the teaching industry. The only problem is,

not too many people are capable of becoming one.

The Ministry aims to transform the IPG into a world-class teacher training

university by 2020. To do so, the Ministry will review the current pre-service training

curriculum to ensure that teachers are adequately prepared to teach the higher-order

thinking skills desired of Malaysia’s students. This will include increasing the percentage

of time spent on practicum training to 40% across all programmes. The IPG will also

offer different programmes (diplomas, undergraduate and postgraduate degrees) to

cater to candidates with varying experience levels (fresh graduates and mid-career

leavers). The selection criteria for new lecturers will be enhanced, and existing lecturers

will be upskilled. This is very important in order to make sure the level of readiness of

everyone related to education are always at a high level to prevent the quality from

getting downgraded.

Teachers will receive greater support to help them achieve their full potential.

When they enter the profession, teachers will develop an individualised CPD

programme with their supervisors. This CPD programme will include common training

requirements expected of all teachers, as well as electives that teachers can pursue

based on their own developmental needs. It will mostly be run at school, as school-

based training has proven to be the most effective form of CPD. It will use a network of

peers including teacher coaches, senior teachers, and principals to disseminate best

practices. The training will allow teachers to continuously build their skill levels against

each of the competencies expected of a teacher. The Teacher Education Division or

Bahagian Pendidikan Guru (BPG) will be responsible for providing this CPD. This

programme will allow teachers to always improve on themselves until they achieve their

full potential.

Teachers will enjoy a reduced administrative burden, so that they can focus the

majority of their time on their core function of teaching. This will be achieved by

streamlining and simplifying existing data collection and management processes. Some

administrative functions will also be moved to a centralised service centre or to a

dedicated administrative teacher at the school level. However, this could only be

enjoyed when there is enough man power to handle everything that is not the core

function of teaching.

Teachers will be assessed annually by their principals, with input potentially

being provided by peers. This assessment will be done using a new evaluation

instrument that focuses on teachers’ ability to deliver effective instruction in and out of

the classroom. This new tool is more reflective of the fact that a teacher’s primary role is

helping students learn. High-performing teachers will enjoy faster career progression.

Teachers who are struggling to meet the minimum quality will receive extra coaching

support to help them get back on track. Teachers who consistently underperform even

with the extra support will be redeployed to other school-based functions such as

administration, discipline management or co-curricular management. Over time, the

Ministry will gradually reduce the total cohort size of teachers through improvements in

teacher time utilisation and productivity.

Teachers will also be able to pursue attractive pathways based on their

performance, potential and interests. For example, they may wish to pursue a

leadership role at the school, district, state, or federal level. They may choose to

become subject specialists focused on developing curriculum, assessment, and training

programmes for the broader system. They may work as master teachers in schools.

Regardless of the pathway chosen, the commitment to investing in their development

and in building an environment of professional accountability will be maintained across

their careers. There will also be comparable opportunities for promotion across these

pathways.

2.2 Efforts to Improve Development of Education and its Challenge

In order to improve the development of education in this country, a lot of efforts

must be taken to realize the aspirations and goals of this country to have a world-class

education. To accomplish that mission, there are a few things that should be taken into

consideration.

One of the thing should be prioritize is to provide Malaysian students with equal

access to quality education. Quality education here means that it must be of an

international standard. Malaysian students have always been excellent in reproducing

subject content in the past. But nowadays, this skill is no longer valuable due to the ever

changing economy. Sadly in Malaysian context, it is suggested that most of our

students still fall short in terms of global competition. To improve the situation, students

should be taught to reason, to extrapolate, and to creatively apply their knowledge in all

kind of settings so that they would be able to successful. The students also need

attributes such as leadership to be globally competitive.

To provide equal education to all Malaysian students, children who were born in

poor families must not be excluded from receiving the benefits. They should receive the

same knowledge contents that have been given to children that come from better

families. It is undeniable that socio-economic status has always become the greatest

factor in the result of academic. It is also one of the main contributions to the student

outcome gaps in Malaysia between those from poor and better families. If all Malaysian

students have the same access to the quality education, eventually the student outcome

gaps could be reduced.

Another thing that can be done to improve the development of education is

through benchmarking of the languages learning, Mathematics, and Science to

international standards. Every student should receive a strong basic in the skills of

literacy and numeracy as well as in Science. All of that are very important since it was

the key growth area for Malaysian economy. A curriculum that has been benchmarked

to the standards of high-performing education systems will be used to teach students.

Still, there are some issues that should be taken into consideration such as the parents’

confidence. The benchmarking should be validated by an independent party in order to

increase the parents’ towards the curriculum.

The revision of school curriculum such as Kurikulum Standard Sekolah Rendah

(KSSR) was done to promote a balanced set of knowledge and skills such as creative

thinking, innovation, problem-solving, and leadership. It also emphasizes more on

student-centred activities and differentiated teaching. A greater emphasizes were put on

problem-based and project-based work, a streamlined set of subjects or themes, and

formative assessments. All these were planned in the new revised curriculum to further

improve the education of our country. The only challenge is that the implementation of

the curriculum would take a longer time before it could be fully understood and utilized

in every school in Malaysia. Everyone must be made aware about these changes if we

want to ensure the success of this curriculum.

Efforts were also launched to raise the quality of all preschools in Malaysia. This

is very important since education in Malaysia started since a child is aged 5 years old.

By that time, they are required to enroll in a registered preschool, be it public or private.

The only problem is that some low-income families could not afford to send their child to

preschool. To prevent this problem from continuing, the Ministry of Education has taken

initiative by giving financial support to the families to ensure that their children’s

education needs were fulfilled. There is also a set of national quality standards that

should be followed by all preschools, including a provision that a person should have a

minimum diploma qualification in order to become preschool teacher. These preschools

will be inspected regularly by the Ministry or the Early Childhood Care and Education

Council of Malaysia to ensure that they meet minimum standards.

While striving to improve the development of Malaysian education, we must not

forget the students with specific needs such as the Orang Asli and other minority

groups, and students with physical or learning disabilities. We should invest more in

physical and teaching resources for students with specific needs. These students need

a lot of additional support so that they can enjoy the same educational opportunities like

what have been received by other normal students. All of them should go to schools

with the facilities and equipment needed to create conducive and supportive learning

environments that are suitable for them. Usually, the challenge when dealing with

students that have specific needs is that sometimes it is difficult to really understand

their situation. In order to overcome the problem, we must hire teachers who have

received additional training to help them understand their students’ specific contexts

and challenges. These students will also be supported by an expanded network of

counsellors, therapists, and teaching assistants, as required to further enhance their

learning experience.

Islamic and Moral Education should be given a greater focus if we want to

improve our education. It is because every student must leave school as a global citizen

imbued with core, universal values and a strong Malaysian identity. The Islamic and

Moral education contributes the values that they will learn and apply in their day-to-day

lives, leading to more civic behaviour such as an increase in volunteerism, a willingness

to embrace peoples of other nationalities, religions and ethnicities, and a reduction in

corruption and crime. However, this effort does not come without challenge. It would be

of no use if it is not fully emphasizes in schools. Teachers who taught the subject must

make sure that students really understand and able to apply it immediately especially in

the school areas.

Students should be holistically reinforced by asking them to participate in one

Sport, one Club, and one Uniformed Body. Co-curricular involvement provides students

with opportunities to develop their individual talents and interests outside of a formal

classroom setting. Students will also have excellent opportunities to show leadership

skill. The challenge that rises is that not every child will participate in the activities. It is

important to make sure that every student will at least participate in one of the activity

that has been prepared. To improve the quality of activities offered at each school, the

Ministry provided targeted training to teachers who act as advisors for these different

activities. By improving the quality of activities, it can be said that it is indirectly

improving the development of education in Malaysia.

Starting from 2015, every school in Malaysia, regardless of location, size, or type,

should meet a set of minimum infrastructure requirements to create a safe, hygienic,

and conducive environment for learning. This includes access to clean and treated

water, at least 12-hours of electricity per day, along with sufficient toilets, classrooms,

tables, and chairs for the student and teacher population. Once all schools have met

basic infrastructure standards, the Ministry will proceed to invest in another wave of

upgrades to meet baseline requirements for delivering the curriculum effectively such as

Science laboratories and Living Skills workshops. The challenge is that there are many

infrastructures that are still lacking in Sabah and Sarawak. Therefore, it is important to

focus the development in that place first since it could lead to a rapid increase in the

development of education.

Another thing that could contribute to the development of education is through

financial support given to all government and government-aided schools. The issue is,

sometimes there are schools which got financial support more than other schools that

needed it more. This has led to an imbalance in the allocation of financial support. To

solve this issue, the Ministry has develop and implement a transparent and equitable

set of principles for the allocation of financial and other support to all school types.

These principles will be in line with the system aspirations of access, quality, equity,

unity, and efficiency. For example, the Ministry recognises that some schools face more

challenges than others due to their higher proportion of low-income students or students

with specific needs. In terms of equity, these schools will require additional funding so

that they can provide extra support services for their students.

Across all 10,000 schools in Malaysia, ICT is considered as a great medium to

enhance teaching and learning sessions. More than RM6 billion has been spent on

information and communication technology (ICT) over the past decade as an initiative to

improve the education system. Students should be able to access a wider range of

content that is more engaging and interactive. Teachers and principals should have

access to both national and international learning resources and communities to help

them improve their practice. However, it was found that ICT usage has not gone much

further than the use of word-processing applications as an instructional tool. ICT has

tremendous potential to accelerate the learning of a wide range of knowledge and

thinking skills. However, this potential has not yet been achieved. More courses on ICT

should be given to teachers so that they would be able to use their ICT skill more often

during class.

Another thing that can be done to develop Malaysian education is through

augmentation of online content. It is used to share best practices from the best teachers

delivering lessons in Science, Mathematics, Bahasa Malaysia, and English language.

Regular teachers will be able to access even more exemplary teaching resources

online. Other subjects will be added to the video library over time. This resource can be

used by teachers for inspiration or even by students as a revision tool. The only

challenge is that sometimes it is very hard to connect to the server due to the bad

internet connection in certain places. Action must be taken to improve the capability of

online networking in Malaysia so that it could contribute to a better education

development.

Every parent must be an active partner in their child’s learning. Not only through

the standard activities like report card and sports days, but also through a strengthened

parent-teacher association or Persatuan Ibu Bapa dan Guru (PIBG). A lot of input on

school-based management matters, as well as parent toolkits to support student

learning could be provided. Schools will also have a network of community and private

sector partners that contribute expertise to the school’s development. The involvement

of all these stakeholders will create a learning ecosystem that reinforces the knowledge,

skills, and values taught to students at school, thus leading to a better education. The

only obstacle is that sometimes not everything planned is achievable due to lack of

cooperation from everyone.