Malaysian pupils performing poorly because of centralised system, says World Bank
Trinna Leong, The Malaysian Insider
Malaysia’s centralised education system that controls recruitment and spending plans has contributed to schoolchildren performing badly, says a World Bank report released this month.
The Wall Street Journal reported today that the Education Ministry dictated the expenditure, teaching staff recruitment, syllabus and textbooks while little information was available on each school’s performance.
“Around 65% of teacher hires are done by the national government rather than individual schools, compared with 5% in South Korea, where public schools have more autonomy,” the global business daily quoted the World Bank report as saying.
World Bank Southeast Asia director Ulrich Zachau said parents hardly provided feedback to school administrators and with all the factors combined, schools became less accountable.
Malaysia had performed poorly in the Programme for International Student Assessment (Pisa) conducted by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, coming in No. 52 out of the 65 countries polled.
The country’s 15-year-olds were tested on Mathematics, Science and reading.
Ranking in the bottom third, Malaysia lagged behind even 17th place Vietnam, a low-income country.
The Wall Street Journal reported that despite the World Bank saying that there were enough teachers in Malaysia, parents argued that the quality of teaching was debatable.
Parents have said that teachers were not committed in their job, citing examples of teachers who were more engrossed in their handphones than they were with students during classroom hours.
However, teachers said that it was unfair to label teachers uncommitted.
“Teachers today adopt different methods in teaching subjects to students,” the daily quoted Adele Phang, a teacher, as saying.
The parents’ concern also extended to the Government’s shifting polices of alternating between Malay and English as the medium of instruction in Mathematics and Science.
