RM270 mil spent on English language trainers

An "absurd amount" of RM270 million was spent by the Education Ministry over a period of three years to pay foreign consultants to train local English teachers, an opposition MP said today.

Compared with the controversial RM20 million paid to McKinseyfor the National Education Blueprint, this has been an even bigger wastage by the ministry, which gets one of the largest budget allocations every year, Bukit Bendera MP Zairil Khir Johari said. 

"There is absolutely no justification for the Education Ministry's penchant for hiring overpaid consultants, especially when cheaper and better options are readily available," Zairil said in a press statement.

"This amount would appear to mean that Mckinsey's RM20 million consultancy job is only the tip of an iceberg."

Zairil estimates that the RM270 million spent to hire 360 English language mentors breaks down to RM250,000 a year for each mentor, or an extravagant sum of almost RM21,000 a month.

The ministry, he added, said it hired three external consultants, the British Council, Brighton Education Group and SMR HR Group, from 2011 to 2013 to improve the standards of local English teachers.

"No matter what explanation the Education Ministry gives, there is no way they can justify the absurd amount of money spent to provide what is essentially a three years' paid working holiday for 360 native English mentors," Zairil said.

According to him, the parliamentary reply he received said the money was used to train 7,500 teachers from 1,800 schools all across the country.

Zairil said "feedback received from teachers undergoing the programme" showed that the trainers only mentored the teachers for only three to four hours every month.

"How is anyone expected to master a language, or a subject for that matter, with only three to four hours of training a month?" he asked.

It would be much cheaper, Zairil added, to enrol the same teachers in a properly structured English language degree programme in a local university.