New Minister and Deputy Minister, but same old stories

By Stephen Ng

In order for the Minister of Education, Maszlee Malik and his deputy Teo Nie Ching to implement the much needed overhaul to our education system, they need to look into the burning issues involving the school heads.

By now, Maszlee should have learnt that whatever policy that he announces in public, will not see the light of the day unless the heads of schools are willing to implement them. Over the past two years that I have been with Jiazong, I learnt that many of them, especially in the SJKCs, are more interested in money matters than to improve the quality of the education for young children.

I have already highlighted to Maszlee and Teo's attention that schools especially the Chinese primary schools are unwilling to solve issues relating to:

• Additional workbooks. This has been a major issue affecting the schools, which clearly involves a cartel. Since 2000, the Ministry of Education has issued a directive to control the number of additional books allowed by the ministry but because of the huge amount of money involved, most school heads choose to defy. Last year, a Standard Five had 29 workbooks. Even after the warning issued by the Minister and Deputy Minister of Education last year, next year, my son who will be in Standard Five would have to buy 17 workbooks. Despite raising this with Maszlee and Teo in both formal and informal communication, no action has been taken to put a stop to the nonsense. I counted in my son's Standard Four Bahasa Malaysia subject, and it was a total of 426 pages. This includes the school textbook, two additional workbooks and two resource books. This is repeated again in 2019.
  
• Heavy school bags. I was personally very disappointed with Maszlee when he merely delegated the task of reducing weight of school bags to school heads. It is obvious to me that he lacks experience. Anyone who is familiar with the Malaysian education landscape would have realised that school heads have failed to address this issue for all those umpteen years before Maszlee became minister; there is, therefore, no reason why they would abide by his directive unless the ministry imposes strict rules and monitors the school bags. School heads have not even been asked to provide an action plan on how they can reduce their pupils' bag load. How will Maszlee be able to make a difference? In fact, I was appalled when he introduced a new subject called "Moral Studies." As far as I know, there is already a subject known as "Civics." With every additional subject, the kids will have another book to bring to school.
  
• Additional tuition classes. These classes are taught by school teachers and parents having to pay RM500 per child a year. This is what SJKC Puay Chai 2 teachers asked the parents to pay. Firstly, school teachers are not supposed to be involved in teaching the additional classes. This, having been communicated to both Maszlee and Teo, I am now asking why they have not issued any directive to stop these additional classes in schools. A fellow parent and I have estimated that the collection of the fees could hit at least RM300,000 per annum. Previously, when computer classes were conducted during school hours, the PIBG collected RM300,000 and paid external vendors RM200,000 and kept the balance. This is a handsome profit of 30%, at the expense of parents who have to fork out so much money every year for their children's so-called "free education" in government schools. This is why the PIBG account, at one point, had ballooned to nearly RM700,000, but my son told me that there are hardly any basketball or volleyball that can still be used for their physical education.
  
• Bully and Sexual Harassment Cases. A number of such cases have come to the attention of both minister and deputy minister, but we have yet to see any serious actions being undertaken by the ministry to resolve the issues.'

I have already told the Minister that principals who have courted numerous issues should be transferred out with immediate effect. Failing to do so will mean more issues will crop up and the school heads ignoring complaints from parents. This has happened in the past, and it is still prevalent.

In particular, I have also highlighted to both Maszlee and Teo a letter that was written by parents and the Board of Governors of a particular Chinese primary school to the former deputy minister. This issue has yet to be addressed by Maszlee, Teo, and the Director-General of Education, Dr Amin Senin, who has known about the issues since last year. 

I will wait till this Friday before I take certain people to task for failing to address the real issues on the ground.