Reforms will bring students back to public schools, says Putrajaya but parent group disagrees

Education Minister II Datuk Seri Idris Jusoh is confident that more parents will send their children to public schools following improvements in the national schools system. – The Malaysian Insider file pic, June 22, 2014.

Improvements in Malaysian national schools will lead parents who have enrolled their children in expensive private schools to return them to the public system, says Education Minister II Datuk Seri Idris Jusoh.

In a bold “bet” on a radio show a few days ago, Idris predicted that this reverse migration would occur when reforms in the national education started producing results within the next one or two years.

A vocal parent group however, has cast doubts on the minister’s claims, saying that parents who have committed to private education would only trust public schools if the government took concrete steps to create an English-medium syllabus.

This is because the main attraction of private schools is an English-medium syllabus that prepares students for overseas universities and colleges, said Parent Action Group for Education (PAGE).

In a June 16 interview with English radio station BFM 89.9, Idris had listed several reforms which he claimed would improve the quality of public schools and get back students who either take home schooling or go to private schools.

"I can bet next year or the year after, you are going see more kids from private to public schools,” Idris had told The Breakfast Grille host Sharaad Kutaan.

"We are improving public schools and more people are seeing this and that private schools are charging fees that they should not be charging and not doing things they are supposed to be doing,” he said.

PAGE chairperson Datin Noor Azimah Abdul Rahim, when asked to comment on Idris' predictions, said the improvements were not enough to draw parents who have invested in private schools.

"More English is not enough. You have to teach science and maths in English," Noor Azimah said, referring to PAGE's main clarion call of wanting the ministry to allow schools to continue the policy of the teaching and learning of science and mathematics in English, also known by its Malay acronym of PPSMI.

The policy was started in all schools in 2003 but was discontinued in 2011. Its main aim was to help students make the transition from learning the two subjects in Bahasa Malaysia in secondary school to university where they were mostly taught in English.

Its secondary aim was to give more opportunities for students to practise English.

Several schools still continue the policy which is supposed to be totally phased out in 2021.

Private schools, Noor Azimah said, also tailored their syllabuses to international standards and prepared students to sit for "O" and "A" level examinations which are necessary for getting into foreign institutions.

But Idris said the government reforms include bringing back the importance of English to schools and re-training two thirds of the 16,000 English teachers classified as sub-par.

Idris said schools would focus on developing higher order thinking skills (KBAT) in students, another main thrust of the Najib administration’s Malaysian Education Blueprint 2013-2025.

According to the blueprint, KBAT will shift learning away from rote memorisation to teaching students to analyse and interpret data and apply information.

He also claimed that the new and improved School Based Assessment (SBA) system was another tool to improve the quality of learning despite problems in the first three years of its implementation.

Another improvement that the blueprint will bring is psychometric tests that will be integrated into how students are assessed, with Idris claiming that Malaysia will be the first in the world to do this.

The blueprint explains that the psychometric method assesses the skills, interests, aptitude, attitude and personality of a student. Aptitude tests are used to assess students’ innate and acquired abilities, such as in thinking and problem-solving.

The slew of measures are part of the reforms in the blueprint meant to overhaul the country's moribund national school system which has been plagued with decades of flip-flop language policies, mediocre teachers, crumbling facilities, especially in rural areas, and a syllabus that critics claim emphasises the skill of exam-taking instead of actual learning.

These weaknesses were glaringly apparent when Malaysian Form Three students were placed in the bottom one-third among students from 65 countries in an international assessment in 2012 that tested knowledge in maths, reading and science.

Critics have pointed out that the students' poor performance contradicted the Education Ministry's annual announcements of more and more children getting straight As in the Form Three year-end Penilaian Menengah Rendah (PMR) examination.

On Tuesday, Education Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin said that 12 out of 25 initiatives of the blueprint have produced encouraging results since they were introduced in September last year.

As reported by the New Straits Times, Muhyiddin said among the initiatives that have shown results are that teachers are starting to apply higher order thinking skills in their lessons, more weak English teachers are being retrained, and more rural and low-income parents are enrolling their kids in pre-school.

- TMI