Tasks for Education Minister
The matter of having only single session schools has been discussed since 2007 but there seems to be no will or desire to make it a reality.
DEAR Education Minister, the following are some homework assignments for you and your ministry to complete over five years. The assignments are listed from the easiest to the hardest, and the populace will grade you based on how well the pupils and students in your care perform. How well you do has a direct relation to the wellbeing of our country.
The easiest assignment is to stop the practice of Saturday make-up classes. It is a sheer waste of time as attendance is appalling. More than 180,000 teachers lose family time when these classes are held. There are about 240 days in the school year before term holidays where classes can be planned to take into consideration festive public holidays and term holidays that can dovetail with each other.
Every year, every school except the elite ones take in illiterate pupils and students. Some continue in our system for 11 years with little to show after all these years. These students are fertile ground for gang recruitment and are apt to destructive tendencies such as vandalism and truancy.
Every school should screen every child for problems in reading and writing, and empowered to put in place special classes to help them. School heads will not do this of their own accord, so there must be a circular from the Education Ministry directing them to do so.
If a school turns out an illiterate student in, say, five years, the entire school should be penalised by denying all staff promo- tion and salary increment.
The matter of having only single session schools has been discussed since 2007 but there seems to be no will or desire to make it a reality. It can only be realised when salaries are reviewed to reflect the 8am to 4pm school hours. Singapore and Thailand have conducted single session in schools for years. Why are we lagging behind?
In January 1986, the education ministry of a neighbouring country launched a pilot project in 20 schools to study the impact of a single session system. The study found many benefits from implementing such a system since school facilities are used by only one session of students. With access to resources and facilities for the whole day, schools enjoyed greater flexibility in time scheduling and could introduce more after-school enrichment programmes such as remedial lessons and extracurricular activities.
The study also reported better coordination and consultation among school staff, closer bonds between teachers and pupils that were formed over informal and organised school activities conducted after school hours, and a more cohesive school community.
In view of the positive results, this education ministry decided to implement the system in all schools. In the initial phase, the ministry targeted rolling out the scheme to all secondary schools by 1994.
The next assignment is to change the teaching of Additional Mathematics for which the passing mark can vary from eight to 20, depending on the year. This can be remedied easily. Teach just Modern Maths in Form 4 and only those who score above 65% in this subject should be allowed to study Additional Mathematics. And do not teach Set Theory as the first chapter; do it at the end.
As it is offered now, we would be discouraging students who want to take up STEM as they would think they are failures when they cannot understand Additional Mathematics.
The Education Ministry must make national schools the school of choice, and this can only be done with quality teaching.
Knowledge can be taught in any language. Take religion and politics out. Employ teachers and heads of school across the whole spectrum of our rainbow nation. This must also apply to our universities. If the bell curve reflects ability, then we must accept that second-tier teachers, deans, etc, are filling first-tier posts.
Eliminate the poison that is matriculation. Only the brightest students do well after this at university. The average student, especially those studying Engineering, come out the worst and are unemployable even when they have scored several As in the SPM. (STPM is still the gold standard for preparations to take up degree courses.) I am a civil engineer by profession and have run a firm in partnership with two others for 30 years. We have interviewed scores of graduates and the trend is there to see.
It is incumbent for universities to graduate students with skill sets that can be used. The good practices in Australia and Britain for Engineering is that when students score below 65% in their second year, they are not permitted to proceed to the four-year programme. They finish the third year with a Bachelor of Science and can register as engineering technologists in the respective boards.
Those entering the four-year programme and who can pass would graduate with a Master of Engineering and can register for the professional boards.
When applying this even to first-year students, those who do not make the grade should exit the system after the second year with a diploma. Each of these cohorts must have a skill set, hence the system must deliver an outcome-based education at tertiary level.