Let Sabah schools decide on lessons at home, says MP

 

There is no one-size-fits-all solution for Sabah schools, especially with the disparity in the number of students between urban and rural areas, says opposition MP.

KOTA KINABALU: A Sabah MP has urged the education ministry to allow schools in Sabah to decide whether to conduct home-based lessons in view of the surge in Covid-19 cases in the state.

Kota Kinabalu MP Chan Foong Hin said there was poor attendance at many Sabah schools as parents are opting not to send their children to school because of the many Covid-19 clusters, and also because of the low vaccination rate among children aged five to 12.

“There are even classes where only a single student had turned up,” he said in a statement here today. “At the end of the day, how efficient are such physical classes? Why not facilitate PdPR sessions (home-based learning)?”

He said the ministry should allow school principals and the parent-teacher association to make decisions for each school on their own. “Only the school management itself understands the actual situation best,” he said.

Chan said he was aware that more than half of schoolchildren in Sabah lacked internet access and devices for home learning, and was probably the reason that the ministry had insisted on physical classes as they were worried about the potential dropout rate, especially in rural areas.

“However, when everyone is worried about Covid-19 and there is only one student in the whole class in school in cities such as Kota Kinabalu, having physical classes is equivalent to nothing and is meaningless.

“The ministry should instead remove all red tape required for schools to conduct the sessions and delegate the decision-making to the schools themselves,” he said.- FMT