Push for better education
PRIME Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak’s push for national level education reforms throughout the school system from early childhood education through completion of college or university is a welcome move.
The Prime Minister is in New York on a working visit, attending the second Global Science and Innovation Advisory Council (GSIAC) meeting.
The Higher Education Ministry has embarked on an unprecedented alliance to improve education at every level in a “Cradle to Career” initiative where the problems and challenges faced in the United States and Malaysia in the context of society and community have many similarities.
It involves, among many measures, identifying specific interventions such as daycare or home visits by social service workers that best prepare a child to start kindergarten on the right foot.
The students are then helped to meet carefully tracked indicators of critical progress in, for example, maths and reading proficiency along their educational journey.
Why do children drop out of early education?
One of the reasons is lack of attention and guidance at home from parents, where both parents are working to support the family.
There are times that there is no encouragement or motivation from parents nor a good role model for the student to fall back on.
Parents do not monitor their children’s educational progress at school regularly but keep harping on them when they fail to perform.
There is also peer pressure from friends at school. When the student joins the wrong company in school, negative influences distract him and the student gets into trouble with the discipline teacher.
Parents fail to make an effort to see the discipline teacher to correct the children’s weakness.
Parents play a critical role in their children’s education development. They need to monitor what their children are doing at home, the type of friends they keep and who they meet outside their home or school.
Schools need to have a think tank with a good team of teachers analysing the overall students’ performance and what the areas of weaknesses are.
The school administrator, with the think tank, will strategise an action plan to correct the gaps with extra classes for the weaker students.
The administrator plays an important role in obtaining feedback from students and teachers to make improvements to ensure the “slow coach” student is given all the help to keep up with the good ones.
Najib said that under the initiative and with several interventions by parents and teachers, among other things, the ‘drop-out rate’ among students will be reduced.
Other critical reforms in education are “human capacity building” to turn Malaysia into a developed nation with an innovative ecosystem through innovative education and technology and use of computers or tablets. C. SATHASIVAM SITHERAVELLU, Seremban.