Education is the passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs to those who prepare for it today.
LETTERS: EDUCATION is close to the heart of most, if not all, Malaysians. The Education Ministry has done well in many respects.
For example, last year, 51,191 students from the B40 group successfully enrolled in public higher education institutions through the Special Entry Path Initiative.
Meanwhile, another 4,369 school dropouts enrolled back in school as a result of the Zero Student Dropout Programme, and 4,821 special needs and 2,636 stateless children enrolled in schools due to the Zero Reject Policy.
Moving forward, I believe that the ministry will need to listen attentively to the voices of the young if it truly believes that the young are the future of this country. As one of the youngest, if not the youngest, full professors in the country, I feel obliged to issue a rallying call to the ministry to take bolder steps to accelerate education reforms this year.
In this call, I encourage the ministry to focus on five game-changing strategies for Malaysian education.
First, the ministry needs to walk the talk on diversity and inclusion. The Zero Reject Policy is a good start. But the real deal, I reckon, is to forge ahead with a single-school system, where the right to mother tongue is guaranteed and students have the opportunity to learn other languages. This strategy should enable our young to appreciate and respect other cultures.
It should also empower them to leverage on their mastery of foreign languages. This should prepare our future workforce to engage with the world’s biggest markets, which co-incidentally are the Muslim, Chinese and Indian markets.
Second, the ministry, which consistently receives one of the largest budget allocations every year, must spend prudently by promoting meritocracy to ensure the best return of the people’s investment.
For example, the ministry should treat education loans, such as those from the National Higher Education Fund Corporation, as a mechanism to democratise education.Student borrowers who can demonstrate excellence inside and outside the classroom can have these loans converted into scholarships.
If cost remains a concern, then this strategy can be implemented in stages, such as micro-credentialing and Technical and Vocational Education and Training certification, which can then be fed into higher level qualifications, such as bachelor, master’s and doctoral degrees.
Third, the ministry can scale the impact of educational initiatives by leveraging the technologies brought by the Fourth Industrial Revolution. For example, the ministry can use big data and Internet of things to identify and broadcast the lessons of the best teachers in the country. Students will benefit from well-executed lessons that can be replayed at home, and teachers can learn and build on best teaching practices.
Fourth, the ministry should pursue an education system that fosters and develops T-shaped characteristics among the young. This requires education policies and programmes that focus on developing the vertical stroke of the T, which represents specialisation, as well as the horizontal bar, which represents broader generic attributes such as communication, collaboration and leadership.
The future success of our country is predicated on our education system, which must excel in nurturing T-shaped professionals, as numerous studies on the future of work have emphasised the need to possess deep disciplinary knowledge along with a keen ability to operate effectively across disciplinary and socio-cultural boundaries.
Fifth, the ministry must realise that the country is losing too many of its top graduates to high profile careers at a time when Malaysians are exerting immense pressure to close the achievement gap.
Most often, the teaching profession is not on many top graduates’ radar, as careers in other industries, such as accountancy, engineering and medicine, can be financially tempting.
It is imperative that the ministry positions teaching as a highly rewarding career in the minds of top graduates, as high performing countries, such as Finland, South Korea and Singapore, have succeeded economically by recruiting teachers who are the cream of the crop.
This can be done by compensating teachers with industry-competitive salary packages and heightening the awareness about the effect that teachers can have on other people, and the positive changes they can make through this noble profession.
More importantly, we must always remember that education is the passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs to those who prepare for it today.
PROFESSOR DR LIM WENG MARC
* The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect those of the New Straits Times
NEW STRAITS TIMES ONLINE
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