The Way Forward - An Action Plan for Malaysian Primary Schools

A response to the editor of the Edge requesting feedback on a commentary on the sad state of Malaysian primary schools. Published in the Edge in May 2000. Article dedicated to John Lim, my Standard 5 teacher and school prefect master at St John's School I, KL.

Agree on most points. However, as with a lot of commentaries, it's short on an action plan, though there were hints at 2 elements - raising rewards for primary school teachers and raising entry standards. Here is an attempt to follow through your article with an concrete action plan:

1. Decide on the objective of our primary education system.
I propose that the objective is a good general base of the 3Rs (reading, 'riting, 'rithmetic), and a solid basic conversational and written skills in at 2 languages - English and Bahasa Malaysia. A third language is an option e.g. Mandarin or Tamil.The secondary school will be able to build on this when it comes to more functional subjects at the secondary level.

2. Design a national curriculum for the national schools incorporating these objectives.
It's not difficult. Look back at the national curriculum of say 25 years ago - they had these basic 3R objectives in mind.

3. Keeping in mind that English is the lingua franca of commerce and technology, for the present and in the forseeable future, incorporate English not as a subject, but as a medium of instruction in mathematics and science-based subjects.
Bahasa Malaysia can remain the medium of instruction for History, Geography and other arts-based subjects. Mandarin and Tamil will be options at national schools.

4. Do not implement the national school curriculum immediately.
Select 1-2 urban national schools in each of Kuala Lumpur, Pulau Pinang and Johor Bahru to pilot this new national curriculum. Call them vision schools if you like. Devote high quality teaching resources to this schools. Select the most motivated and high quality teachers among the disillusioned group we have now. Give them new pay scales (so that they do not have to peddle Amway products). Give them performance criteria upfront, including surveys by parents in terms of their child development, in addition to things like exam results of their class. If they beat the criteria, give them a bonus. If they don't, fire them. As a carrot, this core group of talented, motivated teachers, if they succeed, should be offered the role of trainers of teachers of future schools.

5. Hire expert primary school educationists, from abroad if necessary, to train the pilot school teachers.
Recognise that money is not the only motivating factor for people to join a particular profesion - it is also the ability to develop oneself in terms of skills and careers. Investing in training for these pilot teachers is critical. A one year course training course including a spell in a benchmark primary school overseas is the minimum. (they don't have to go far, you can find many of these south of the border)

6. Let the process begin.
Attract students and win support of their parents by demonstrating the amount of investment in terms of teacher training into these pilot schools. (Persuading parents from the alternative national schools will not be hard - it will be harder to persuade parents from Chinese schools).

7. Document and publicise the early successes of students of these pilot schools.
Actively involve parents in gauging their children's development. If they see successes, you can bet your bottom dollar they will be the strongest advocates of the new schools and curriculum8. After the pilot, which should last at least 2 or 3 years, prepare the roll out of this new national curriculum together with attendant teacher resources to 2-3 more urban schools in each major city in Malaysia, and major towns.

Also select selected rural schools that are receptive to such schools. Focus on existing national schools. Teachers from the original pilot schools should be stationed in each of these schools, to help the transition from the old curriculum to the new curriculum. again, upgrade pay scales in return for a new performnance based contracts.

9. After 5-6 years, the first results of a full complete primary education system based on new curriculum will be available. If this is a success, we then have proof that the new curriculum supported by adequate teaching resources has worked. Publicise and propagate the success - implement wider roll-out.

10. Invite, don't coerce, the Chinese and Tamil language schools to adopt the new national curriculum.
If they refuse, fine, it's their loss. If they coopt in, support them with the same resources as with national schools. The whole reason that they are resisting vision schools today is that there is no demonstrable proof that the new vision schools will improve educational and teaching standards. Would you buy an untested product from someone whose current product does not work, just based on his promises? Certainly not.

11. In terms of teacher resources, there are plenty of teacher training schools in UK for example who would dearly love to send their teacher trainees to work for a year in a foreign country. Offer one year temporary positions to these teachers to work in Malaysian primary schools - get them to teach the English curriculum - i.e. the science and mathematics-based subjects. You don;t need to pay them very much - food and lodging plus a small living allownace is fine - it;s the experience they want not the money.

12. Don't just limit reforms to the primary education system. Set up pilot secondary schools based on the same formula - developing medium of instruction in english for science and maths based subjects and Bahasa Malaysia for arts based subjects. Use the same pilot and roll-out techniques outlined above.

It's a 20 year plan. But our children are worth it.