Saturday, June 10, 2006

Education Ministry's Big Plans

Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Hussein stated that an ambitious and mammoth Education Blueprint "is a step away from being unveiled".

The objective of the Blueprint is to meet the goals highlighted in the 9th Malaysia Plan - rejuvenate national schools, reduce the knowledge gap between rural and urban areas, strengthen the quality of the curriculum and uplift the teaching profession. On top of that the Ministry wants to ensure that "there are no more dropouts, students who cannot read, write or count, and those who have no information technology and communication (ICT) skills."

Amongst the action items the plan intends to implement?
Beat bureaucracy, lead well and stamp out time-wasting projects.
Apparently, the actions have already started.
In a short time the task force had already improved the flow of grants to schools with the ministry’s finance division making direct payments to many schools by way of electronic transfers. This eliminate the process where the money is channelled to the state education departments, district offices and state accounting offices before it reaches the schools.
It is a small step in the right direction, and we certainly hope to see more. Lets hope the Minister of Education is up to the task.

15 comments:

Anonymous said...

..let's give support to the authorities to redirect our basic education system to be the source of praise and envy by all, as well as a source of strength of our country..

signed:

..inspired :)

Anonymous said...

I fervently hope it is not another NATO project...

NATO is No Action Talk Only...

surfwarrior said...

Five year plan is short term when you consider education is a life long process. Does the education Ministry realize the root causes of inefficient bureaucracy and how time-wasting projects are approved?

Without the will to stamp out corruption, and put in place checks and balances in the decision making process, this is just another futile exercise. Have we not learnt from history or is history going to be repeated. Can we be certain that the education Ministry is not politicizing education for political gain instead of education for the masses and for the good of nation building?

Without wider participation from those directly affected, the blueprint is just another policy not worth the paper it’s written on except for the few cronies who will benefit enormously financially from the budget allocation! Such is the state of our education policy and the current generation of unemployable graduate is the testimony.

dracula77 said...

I just hope this project is Malaysian 'government project' not another 'political project'. There is a huge gap between rural and urban schools..Lots of things need to be done i.e ICT, english proficiency, facilities...If they give 10 computers to urban school, it's not the same as 10 computers in rural school. Most people in the city can afford it, but in rural area there's no way they can afford it??And even if they can afford it, they need some help to be ICT literate. Few years ago gov launched "one house one computer", how close are we to it?? Probably in cities, it easily achieved 2-4 computers for one house, how about in rural area? When gov decided to use english for science and maths, who was greatly affected?? In the city, at least we tried to use english at home. In villages, can we expect those pakcik makcik, aci, nyonya etc to speak english with their kids at home? This kids only use english at school. Thus, we really need some support here...

Bigjoe99 said...

Having being involved in the education business, I am very doubtfull anything this government can do to radically change anything in five years. It can eliminate waste and mistakes to a certain extent but real improvement in quality of education will be marginal and largely organic.

The two main reason why our education is in a malaise is 1) Meritocracy and 2) Money to Teachers (either to pay or resources).

Yes the delivery system is a problem but without the two main factor being addressed, any changes in delivery system will not give result being sought after. We will still have mediocre students and we will still have poor skill workforce.

Currently the waste in education is huge. We have schools that people don't want. Materials and products and program being purchased that get thrown away eventually or does nothing. Overstaffing in many areas. All these even if eliminated won't result in improvement in our children's education, sadly.

We have a crises in education, not just a problem. Think about it. We went from an education system where it became difficult to recruit teachers to one where pay has not changed but we have too many teachers? Its all sign of a system about to break down. All these grand plans won't do much for our children unless they are willing to confront the the main core issues: Meritocracy and teacher's pay and resources.

Anonymous said...

The ministry of education has had enough criticisms from the public. I am hopeful that it is moving in the right direction in both planning and execution.

dulcinea said...

I really hope that with all these new plans, teachers and students become the focus - not infrastructure and token amounts spent here and there.
Teachers need to be paid more. For the teachers who've created a lasting impression in my memory, the amount they are being paid is just ridiculous. And to justify the higher pay, it'd be nice if we had more qualified teachers.
We need more focus on actual education, instead of national education. We need more sincere efforts in terms of curricular activities and less emphasis on straight As.
Meritocracy would be nice. So would more saturdays for school activities. There's the big picture and yet there are the little details. I hope the details don't get washed away by a wave of political agenda.

Anonymous said...

As an observant to what our MOE is doing, it is quite confusing what MOE is trying to achieve with new plans coming up from time to time.

New plans are good if they are able to run consistently with the existing ones!

Long long time ago, it started with local Uni like USM offering degree program in education!

Personally I think this is a good move. I have had additional maths
trained by USM and UM before. They are superb.

Then we have UPSI coming up with
their own degree programs..

Then we have KPLI..

Now we are going to have Institut Perguruan (an upgrade from existing Teaching training colleges)

I dont know why our ministry is rushing up things...

let the teachers go to proper place like USM or UM to get their degree..

why there is a rush to offer degree program at teacher training colleges..

I puzzle..?

Do we have enough manpower in teacher training colleges?

By merely upgrading the status with the change of name overnight will not improve our standard of education..


Do things step by step, and not rush into things!

By the same anology, many enterpreneurs do not make it in their business ventures because they rush into things without proper business plan and profit analysis!!

Could we imagine we can abadon school projects? School that is supposed to be ready in 36 months are not delivered after 60 months?

Imagine how much public funds are being wasted?

Check it out
today's berita harian..

http://www.bharian.com.my/m/BHarian/Monday/Rencana/20060612080849/Article/

Anonymous said...

As management consultant, I think MOE should make sure the house is in order before talking of big plans!

I have a strong feeling that
public fund allocated under the budget is not chanelled properly!

Make sure every cent received under the BUDGET counts towards
achieving the purpose.

I suppose any plan must be both macro-managed and micro-managed properly!

just my2sen!

Anonymous said...

The article is true..

whatever institut perguruan in mind..

they are supposed to be administered under a university..

just like the example in HK and Spore!

Dont outsmart the convention with Malaysian way!

Anonymous said...

Trouble with these ministers they seems to have 'great blue prints' all the time.

The only common blue prints they have that seems successful all the time ..blueprint for dismantling a perfect running system.
Just look at the mess of our education system. They just keep continuosly messing it up.
they keep proposing ad hoc measures and never studied the root cause of any problems, never studied it in detail and holistically...the they create more mess than the amount of mess initially they are trying to solve.

As I can see it our education system is heading no where...except towards entropy. Cant really blame this thing happening with so many monkeys we elected in parliament....

Anonymous said...

I think our minister in our MOE must take a deep look at all the mess that has been discussed in the above article.

Dont propose a quick fix measure just because you want to solve the problem of unemployed graduates.

In return, the four-year trained education graduates have been affected.

They are the ones whom have decided 4 years ago to become a teacher, and devoted four years of their life in universities to become a teacher. It is a professional course they have undertaken.

They should be given the priority in placement.

Stop deny the problem. Admit it you cannot solve the problem of unemployed graduates by merely attempting a quick fix measure implemented in MOE, and there you go the solution.

Dont succumb to the pressure of your superiors.

Still, we are not forgetting the financial blunder of the Commonwealth Game held in Stadium at Bukit Jalil.

Do put your house in order. We cannot afford that education system that goes wrong.


Audi Auteram Partem

Anonymous said...

Dont talk about big plans.

If you can give a solid system with 1% defect, where all stakeholders are happy, we are thankful.

Back to basics!

Guess we need to set some KPIs for our minister in MOE.

Let us start the ball rolling!

1. Solve all abadon primary and
secondary school projects
within 12 months from today.

2. Those existing teachers whom
have undergoned degree program
must be given priority in their
home state, or within 30km
radius from their residence.

3. All education graduates with
CGPA 3.00 and above must be
placed 100% before any placement
of other trainees from other
kind of programs.

How about that?


The Observant

Anonymous said...

Sometimes I cant help feeling we bloggers here are like a few dogs barking at a mountain. We bark and bark to no avail, because those in the respective ministries do not bother to read what we write..
Even if we bark till our intestines come out would not make a dent on the higher ups. Because the end result is our negara terbilang and cemerlang will keep on doing what they know best...that is making the mess of wat is already a mess
So much so at the end of the day we just feel tired and worn out blogging
In order to achieve meaningful results we must form an alliance with DAP or Lim Kit siang who will bring our blogs to the parliament or to the public

Anonymous said...

One thing our government is exceptionally good at is in doing exercises in futility.
It seems almost everyday we are awakened with something new the govet is doing here and there...in the end it is the same results...failure here and there.
Who suffers for their shortsightedness? we, the rakyat
Who pays for the blunder?
We the rakyat
Who elected them again and again to continue their fool hardiness?
We the rakyat again

res ipsa loqitor