KUALA LUMPUR - Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak on
Tuesday launched the Malaysia Education Blueprint 2013-2025 Preliminary Report
which outlines 11 strategic and operational shifts to transform the country's
education system.
The prime minister has also
promised to depoliticise the education system, vowing that there will be equal
opportunities for all.
Malaysia has a complex education
system. Apart from the mainstream national schools, there are the vernacular Chinese
and Tamil schools, sekolah agama or religious schools as well as private and
international schools.
They are all part of the
country's legacy which the prime minister said he intends to uphold.
Speaking at the launch of the
preliminary blueprint report, Mr Najib said he is determined to leave schools
out of politics and instead focus on producing a world class future generation.
"To ensure a better future
for Malaysian children, all leaders must have the moral courage to depoliticise
education. To do so, we must ensure decisions are made in the best interest of
future generations and not populist oriented," the prime minister said.
The preliminary blueprint offers
a vision of the education system and students that Malaysia both needs and
deserves, detailing the shifts required to achieve that vision.
The report was earlier tabled by
Deputy Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin, who is also the Education Minister, at
the Kuala Lumpur Convention Centre (KLCC).
The document said the Education
Ministry hopes that this effort will inform the national discussion on how to
fundamentally transform Malaysia's education system, and will seek feedback
from across the community on this preliminary effort before finalising the
blueprint in December 2012.
The education transformation is
to take place over 13 years, with Wave 1 (2012-2015) focusing on efforts to
turn around the system by supporting teachers and focusing on core skills, Wave
2 (2016-2020) on accelerating system improvement and Wave 3 (2021-2025) on
moving towards excellence with increased operational flexibility.
To improve English proficiency,
English literature will be introduced into the school syllabus in stages.
Starting from next year, 70,000
English teachers will also be sent for Cambridge placement tests to improve the
quality of teachers.
Deputy Prime Minister Muhyiddin
said there were plans for students to not only master Malay and English, but a
third language as well.
In the long run, there are plans
to revamp the teaching method to encourage creative and critical thinking.
The five outcomes that the
blueprint aspires for the Malaysian education system cover the areas of access,
quality, equity, unity and efficiency.
It seeks to develop students who
possess six key attributes that will enable them to be globally competitive --
namely knowledge, thinking skills, leadership skills, bilingual proficiency,
ethics and spirituality, as well as national identity.
The 11 shifts identified by the
ministry are:
1. Provide equal access to
quality education of an international standard,
2. Ensure every child is
proficient in Bahasa Malaysia and English language,
3. Develop values-driven
Malaysians,
4. Transform teaching into the
profession of choice,
5. Ensure high-performing school
leaders in every school,
6. Empower State Education
Departments, District Education Offices and schools to customise solutions
based on need,
7. Leverage information and
communication technology to scale up quality learning across Malaysia,
8. Transform ministry delivery
capabilities and capacity,
9. Partner with parents,
community and private sector at scale,
10. Maximise student outcomes for
every ringgit,
11. Increase transparency for
direct public accountability.
The report noted that the
Education Ministry had launched a comprehensive review of the education system
in October 2011 in order to develop a new National Education Blueprint.
It said the decision was made in
the context of rising international education standards, the government's
aspiration of better preparing Malaysia's children for the needs of the 21st
century, and increased public and parental expectations of the education
policy.
Over the course of a year, over
50,000 ministry officials, teachers, principals, parents, students and members
of the public across Malaysia were engaged via interviews, focus groups,
surveys, and National Dialogue townhall and roundtable discussions.
The ministry also appointed a
12-member Malaysian panel of experts and a four-member international panel of
experts to provide independent input into the review findings.
Educators welcomed the blueprint,
which they said was long overdue.
Dr Chin Yew Sin, deputy secretary
general of HuaZong, said: "I mean this is all good. Only thing, whether it
is good or no good depends on implementation, whether there is any
deviation."
But opposition politicians were
sceptical of the 13-year roadmap.
Nurul Izzah, vice president of
PKR, said: "There are a lot of things that have been unveiled here. We do
expect this to be done earlier. But we do not want this to be a mere election
campaign exercise."
Tony Pua from the Democratic
Action Party (DAP) said: "Of course it must be depoliticised. The question
then is why weren't we consulted in the entire exercise?"
The government is allocating 16
percent of its budgetary spending, amounting to over US$10 billion, to
education alone as Prime Minister Najib seeks his own mandate from the people
in the key national polls that must be held by April next year.
BERNAMA/CNA/al
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