Too many teachers doing admin work, says professor

He says with the number of students and teachers in the country, classes could easily have a ratio of one teacher for fewer than 20 students.

PETALING JAYA: A university professor has questioned the need for so many teachers to be assigned to perform administrative work instead of teaching.

UCSI professor Tajuddin Rasdi came to this conclusion through his discussions with teachers and the fact that the student-teacher ratio in most classrooms in the country was so high.

He said the large number of students teachers had to teach per classroom affected a teacher’s ability to perform well.

“Children are very precious and as a teacher, you need to be able to treat them as your own children,” he told FMT. “This becomes very difficult when there are 40 students in a class.”

According to statistics on the education ministry’s official webpage, as of 2016 there were a total of 5,074,612 students and 421,828 teachers.

“That means you can easily have a ratio of one teacher for fewer than 20 students and that’s a very good ratio.

“The problem is that you have most of these teachers doing administrative work.”

He said he found the situation to be different when he was staying in the United Kingdom (UK).

“When I was in the UK, there was a time when I had to move one of my children to a different school. I asked the teacher where I could find the education ministry or education department and he said there was no need for all that.

“The teacher said I could just go to the school and register my child there. I asked how my daughter’s file would be moved from one school to the next and the teacher told me not to worry about it and they would send the file over.

“So there’s no necessity to go to different departments or anything complicated like that. There was very little red tape there.”

Tajuddin questioned how the education ministry, through its many visits overseas, could not see what should be implemented in the education system in the country.

“What in heavens is the education ministry doing? They have PhD holders as civil servants and they spend a lot of time travelling here and there. They’re always concerned about benchmarking.

“Personally, I feel that sometimes benchmarking is good and sometimes it’s not so good.

“When it comes to certain things like children’s education, we need to look at how other people are doing it.”  FMT