Declining faith in national education curriculum seen through racial, economic polarisation: Educationist
“The government invests huge amounts of money in education, but it does not result in desirable returns. If we compare our education expenditure with other countries, primary schools are allocated more funds than other developing Asian countries.
(The Sun Daily) – Newly appointed Education Minister Fadhlina Sidek needs to be the catalyst who turns around the education curriculum, which is suffering from a confidence deficit, said an educationist with some 30 years experience in the field.
Ainee Adina Noor Adlan, who prefers to be known as Nina, is the executive director of LeapEd Services, an education-based social enterprise.
“When looking at investments in national education, 90% of the RM55.6 billion allocated in Budget 2023 went to emoluments such as paying salaries and allowances of teachers and Education Ministry staff. These civil servants constitute 30%, or 500,000, of the total 1.7 million of them in the country,” she told theSun.
Nina said education gets the “biggest slice of the cake” every year. In Budget 2023, former finance minister Datuk Seri Tengku Zafrul Tengku Abdul Aziz allocated 14.9% (RM55.6 billion) of the total RM372.3 billion budget towards it.
She said the declining faith in the national education curriculum could be seen through the racial and economic polarisation that is happening in society.
“Race-based polarisation is apparent as we see more Chinese enrolling their children in independent Chinese schools and Malays deserting national schools in favour of international Islamic schools.
“Even economic polarisation can be observed as more middle and upper-middle income earners in the Klang Valley prefer to take their children out of the national education system and enrol them in private or international schools instead,” she said.
Nina added that the reason behind the loss of confidence in the national education system has more to do with inefficient implementation of policies rather than insufficient government allocations.
She said the percentage that the government allocates to educational expenditure compared with the country’s population density is equivalent to those of high-income, developed countries such as the United Arab Emirates (in 2020) and South Korea (in 2018).”
“The government invests huge amounts of money in education, but it does not result in desirable returns. If we compare our education expenditure with other countries, primary schools are allocated more funds than other developing Asian countries.
“In 2020, Malaysia spent 11.5% more than Indonesia, 16.3% more than Vietnam and 16.8% more than Myanmar on teaching materials, ancillary services and administration in its primary schools as reported by the Unesco Institute for Statistics.”
Nina also said although the Education Ministry has excellent policies as can be seen in the Malaysian Education Blueprint 2013-2025, they are poorly implemented.
“In developing education-based policies, students must be put at its centre, with educators ensuring they benefit from holistic development and not rely solely on academic performance.
“Besides that, the school needs to view parents and the community as learning partners. This is especially so since the Covid-19 pandemic, when a lot of the learning took place at home,” she said.
Nina stressed that while an extensive curriculum is important, teachers play a major part in the learning process of students.
“Teachers are not there to provide content but to teach students how to learn and impart evaluation and critical thinking skills, defend arguments and hone their skills to challenge the information we see every day.”
Nina said the education system in the country is too centralised and because there is not much autonomy given to schools, most policies are seen as “one size fits all”.
“Although there are several programmes that ensure some sort of autonomy, such as the District Transformation Programme that aims to improve school performance by empowering state education departments, district education offices and schools, it does not seem to happen.
“Before any such autonomy is given, the Education Ministry needs to build the capacity of those involved in the system, including principals and teachers.”
Teachers are not there to provide content but to teach students how to learn and impart evaluation and critical thinking skills, said Nina.
