Ministry to meet parents on merger of schools
KUCHING: The Ministry of Education, Science and Technological Research together with the District Education Offices ( PPD) are expected to meet parents in rural areas this month to discuss the merging of low- enrolment schools in their respective areas.
Its minister Dato Sri Michael Manyin Jawong said though his ministry together with the state Education Department had identified the low- enrolment schools to be merged, the main concern now was to assure parents that the merger would be for the benefit of the students.
“During a two- day lab held about four weeks ago, the state Education Department has come up with some recommendation on what schools they recommend to be merged and centralised.
“But we don’t want to bulldoze this matter to parents first as our main concern now is to meet with parents and get feedback from them on the merger,” he told a press conference during a lunch break after chairing a meeting with state elected representatives on the proposal to merge lowenrolment schools at a leading hotel here yesterday.
Manyin pointed out that the purpose of the one- day meeting was to inform the elected representatives on the matter and obtain their feedback to this merger proposal.
“Today ( yesterday) the state Education Department is putting up the recommendation ( of identified schools for merger) to the elected representatives and we want to gather their reaction on this.”
Though he did not divulge the number of identified lowenrolment schools to be merged, he noted that the schools are scatted throughout the state and located mostly outside the cities such as in Serian, Baram, Lawas, Kapit and so on.
“Yes, we have identified the low- enrolment schools but at the moment, we cannot visualise when these schools will be merged,” he said when asked if there was a time frame for the merger.
“We hope from our discussion with the elected representatives today ( yesterday), if they are acceptable, then our ministry together with the PPDs will go on the ground to meet the parents in rural areas and we want to do it within this month.”
Manyin admitted that the idea of merging Sarawak’s lowenrolment schools was a tall order but nevertheless the ministry was willing to try and accomplish this goal.
“It is not that easy to merge schools and we have been trying since I was a teacher before. There will be a lot of resistance from the parents because they have their reasons such as sentimental value, transportation issues and so on.
“It will be a very difficult task but at least we try because our main purpose is to improve the overall performance of schools in the state which currently ranks 13th in the country,” he remarked.
The Tebedu assemblyman also explained that while lowenrolment schools may work in developed countries due to personalised attention from teachers among its factors, this was not the case for Sarawak where the rural schools do not have such resources.
“My constituency for instance, parents there are not that educated and the environment is not very conducive, so small schools sometimes do not have the resources as these are only allocated to schools based on population.
“Without resources, the schools will not have qualified teachers to teach certain subjects and that’s why there are instances where in rural schools, the Bahasa Malaysia teachers are also teachers of subjects like English, Mathematics or Science.”
Given such a situation, he added, students would not be able to do well in their studies because they were not taught the proper way.
“We can’t blame the teachers either because they are forced to teach the subject they are not trained in.
“That is why we are finding ways and means on how we can merge low- enrolment schools if possible so that at least the Education Department can provide resources, improve facilities and allocate qualified teachers to teach specific subjects.”
The state currently has 651 schools with 150 students and below while 1,004 more have less than 300 students.
Also present at the press conference were Welfare, Community Wellbeing, Women, Family and Childhood Development Minister Datuk Fatimah Abdullah, Assistant Minister of Education and Technological Research Dr Annuar Rapa’ee and Ministry of Education, Science and Technological Research permanent secretary Datu Sudarsono Osman.