Private tuition’s proliferation: a symptom of our waning education system

 

From Chong Yoong Wen

It is common practice in Malaysia to send one’s child for tuition. Our stereotypically “kiasu” and tiger parenting culture packs Kumon classes and keeps tuition teachers busy.

My peers recall starting school at 7.30am, ending in the afternoon only to proceed with three hours of supplemental classes, excluding musical or sporting activities.

The average Malaysian student spends six hours in supplementary tuition classes a week, including extra classes by school teachers and external tutors. When academics are the ultimate benchmark for a student’s worth here, can we really blame them for putting so much weight on it?

These exams can often feel like the be-all and end-all, especially for the SPM examination, which is the main determinant for entry into pre-university programmes and scholarships.

Extra tutoring also represents a cost to parents. Assuming that tuition for one subject is RM100 per month, four subjects alone could cost RM400, multiplied by the number of children sent for tuition.

This represents a major barrier to equitable access to education. This is backed by a local study that showed that household income is a strong determinant of spending on private tutoring services. Families with higher income have the resources to invest in such services and place greater importance on academic achievement.

Paradoxically, the students who need tuition the most are the ones who can’t afford it. Studies show that students from poorer socioeconomic backgrounds perform worse than their wealthier counterparts.

Poorer children are more prone to stunting from insufficient nutrition which is strongly correlated to weaker cognitive skills and educational performance. These children are also the ones whose parents are unlikely to have the educational attainment enough to help teach them. Failure in mastering foundational skills, like basic mathematics and reading, is vital in one’s later education.

In the annual Pisa assessment, Malaysia has consistently underperformed, ranking in the bottom half of tested countries. Most staggeringly, 58% of our students are unable to reach Level 2 reading in the test, the minimum level of proficiency that students should acquire by the end of secondary education. Compound this with the learning losses from school closures and remote learning during the Covid-19 pandemic, and we have an uncompetitive youth which will go on to become our workforce.

Thus, with the majority of Malaysian students undertaking some form of private tutoring, we have to ask ourselves if our education system is the problem.

Looking at a study conducted in India, we can see that many of the grievances abroad are shared among us Malaysians. Overcrowded classrooms, lack of individual attention, ineffective classroom teaching and curriculum and heavy stress on academic performance.

Similarly, in Algeria, where education is free for up to 15-year-olds, high stake examinations, large class sizes and lack of experienced teachers are cited as the main reasons parents opt to send their children for supplemental classes. Despite being thousands of kilometres away, the same issues that plague an education system give rise to similar outcomes.

I am not at all suggesting a blanket ban on tutoring services; being so heavy-handed would only serve to undermine freedom of choice and increase pressure on our public education system, not even considering how such a ban might be enforced. Instead, we should see how the proliferation of tutoring services is symptomatic of our waning public education system.

Laudably, efforts have been made to combat some of the above issues. High stakes examinations like UPSR and PT3 have been abolished, and more teachers have been hired to deal with overcrowded classrooms.

However, constant changes in education policy and uprooting have resulted in teachers, an indispensable part of the system, facing an uphill battle of multiple challenges. Thus, as a start, one should begin at the attraction, development and retention of talent in the teaching profession.

The starting salary of a teacher at a public school is about RM2,200 with a yearly increment of RM225. However, Malaysia’s poverty line income in 2022 was RM2,589, meaning that new teachers automatically fall below the poverty line.

Beyond this, teachers are not compensated for overtime. They mark exercises at home and supervise co-curricular activities for students, yet are not commensurately rewarded for their impactful work.

A good first step would be to increase the remuneration packages for teachers. For one, teachers should be compensated for overtime, capped at a certain amount of hours. Meanwhile, schools should allocate a portion of discretionary funding to teachers in order to purchase supplementary materials like mahjong papers for group projects, reducing the financial burden in an already arduous process of lesson-planning.

Within Malaysia, there also exists a schism between teaching pedagogy and the needs of the curriculum. The Malaysia Education Blueprint highlights the need for a paradigm shift towards the development of students’ higher-order thinking skills (HOTS) with the aim of 50% SPM questions requiring HOTS. Employers have cited incapabilities in critical thinking and independent learning to be a shortcoming of our graduates.

Researchers found that most class practices involved passive listening with minimal HOTS. 90% of teachers relied heavily or only on the prescribed curriculum, and all teachers in the study fell short with drawing intra and interdisciplinary connections with the subject matter.

Currently, the education ministry requires only seven days of training per year, but 90% of teachers engage in professional development 10 days annually. A possible avenue for change is in providing more and better quality training opportunities for teachers.

National pedagogy falls short in terms of engaging learners, emphasising the regurgitation of information. Instead, workshops should hone and diversify the skillsets of teachers helping them implement strategies such as group assignments, project-based learning and peer/self assessments.

On this front, Teach For Malaysia has made efforts via its Program Duta Guru to empower 4,500 teachers by 2030 to become leaders in their schooling ecosystems. However, for true change, stronger systemic pushes must be made. - FMT

Chong Yoong Wen is a research assistant in think tank Bait Al-Amanah’s Economics & Public Policy division and an FMT reader.

The views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect those of MMKtT.