In the wake of the momentous National Education Blueprint (NEB) launched Tuesday an important point needs to be made. This is not an attempt to fix our school system because it was not broken. Just this year the World Economic Forum’s Global Competitive Index ranked the quality of our education system at number 14 out of 142 countries ahead of the United Kingdom, Germany and the USA.
So the fundamentals are solid but that doesn’t mean it isn’t a good time to transform the entire system. The Najib Government long ago saw the need to create a fresh agenda for school education consistent with the digital age. One that will produce skilled young adults in the next two decades able to grow our high-tech, high income economy.
This blueprint is about more than a new curriculum or teaching techniques. It is a radical rethink of what children need in life. At its worst school education is about filling children with facts but the NEB looks to “knowledge, thinking skills, leadership, bilingual proficiency, ethics and national identity”. More than producing educated students, it recognises that we should also be producing well-rounded citizens.
The blueprint specifies transformation from now until 2015 in what it calls 11 separate shifts. In the early stages it seeks to rewrite the curriculum by 2017 and give high achieving students the chance to finish school earlier. It will “ensure every child is proficient in Bahasa Malaysia and English language”.
The NEB also sets out to make our schools the best connected in the world with high speed 4G internet access to all 10,000 schools and a virtual teaching platform that has already been praised by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).
There will also be a parents’ online network called the School Examination Analysis System (SAPS) that allows them to charts their child’s academic progress via a dedicated interface.
By the middle stages of the NEB roll out it dramatically alters its focus from the students to the teachers. Put bluntly, the blueprint is out to make it harder for graduates to get into teacher training so that only the top 30 percent will be successful.
This is a measure that sounds politically sensitive in what will almost certainly be an election year. Malaysia’s 400,000 teachers rightly take pride in their role as guardians of our children future and the Government will have to properly communicate why this blueprint is a partnership with teachers not the Government undermining their profession, skills or experience.
Beyond getting the buy-in of teachers Najib has a loftier ambition. He wants the NEB to be the start of de-politicising education in Malaysia. Sadly, however, the early signs are that his bi-partisan approach is set to be snubbed by Pakatan Rakyat, which is already cynically extracting as much mileage out of these reforms as it can.
PKR MP Nurul Izzah was prepared to grudgingly welcome the package but offered the snide comment of: “The government is not doing this for us as favour, it is their responsibility”. Perhaps we should just thank her for not rejecting it outright.
DAP’s Tony Pua gave a response that was pure “what about me?”
“Are they (Government) involving us? Are they calling us for the meetings to give feedbacks?” he asked plaintively.
Such responses are a stark reminder of the choices on offer at GE13. Najib’s BN looks to transformation agendas that don’t showcase their full benefits until perhaps 10 or 12 years into the future. This is also the case with both the Economic Transformation Programme and the Political Transformation Programme. If the Government was seeking short-term political dividends it could not count on such long-range projects.
Pakatan Rakyat by comparison, looks no further than GE13. The proof of this are the quick-fire ideas it has trotted out in recent months such as abolishing tolls and scrapping vehicle excise. Voters need to ask themselves: Where are Pakatan Rakyat’s long-term blueprints? The answer is there are none.
Najib’s Government is looking beyond the school-life of our children and to their university years. The Government Tuesday announced a new Key Performance Index (KPI) for University Vice-Chancellors that makes them more accountable for the performance of their institutions.
The systems in Malaysia are being transformed, the people in charge of education are being made more accountable, and our children’s futures have never looked better.