‘REDUCE TEACHERS’ BURDEN’

Abolish unnecessary duties, says NUTP Penang

THE National Union of the Teaching Profession (NUTP) Penang has called for “unnecessary duties” imposed on schoolteachers to be abolished or reformed to lessen their burden.

Its chairman, Ng Weng Tutt, said teachers were saddled with many “unnecessary duties”, which reduced the amount of time they could interact with students.

He cited the “e-Kedatangan” website, which required teachers to key in their students’ attendance daily by 10am.

“This is just one of the webbased activities that are needed to be done daily. Others include ‘e-Disiplin’. Why is there a need for such a workload?

“The PPD (district education office) would then review items keyed into the system. All these are time-consuming.

“Abolishing and reforming all these would be a right step towards lessening teachers’ burden.

“I (hope) the new Education Minister Dr Maszlee Malik can look into this,” he said.

Maszlee recently said the Education Ministry would end the Malaysian Education Quality Standard (SKPMg2) audit, which was reportedly a cumbersome process for 500,000 teachers.

He promised that more similar steps would be taken to ensure that educators could focus on their core duty of nurturing students.

Ng also said teachers should not be disturbed during their breaks on weekends and long holidays, unless necessary.

He said educators with grade DG48 and above were routinely forced to stay back at schools to “look after” the premises during holidays.

“They have to come back and do nothing... seriously, nothing. This is terrible and should be stopped.”

Besides that, Ng said some teachers were contacted late at night by their schools’ administrators to perform tasks.

He proposed that teaching assistants be employed to take over clerical work from educators so that they could focus on teaching.

This (eKedatangan website) is just one of the web-based activities that are needed to be done daily. Why is there a need for such a workload? All these are timeconsuming. Abolishing and reforming all these would be a right step towards lessening teachers’ burden. NG WENG TUTT

NUTP Penang chairman