"Better late than never". We are now a fortnight into the new year. Perhaps as the new year excitement evaporates, it would be more appropriate to review some of the events in 2009 that had played a part to the development of the Malaysian education system.
To me, 2009 had been a year of mixed-signs without any sense of directionality in the development of Malaysian education system. There were changes and policies implemented without "educational" consideration. Malaysians debated and argued about various educational issues from many aspects and viewpoints, yet strangely but true, we do not consider the educational part of the story. I will attempt to illustrate my point using the events that had taken place in 2009.
First, the issue about national schools and vernacular schools, serves as a perfect example to illustrate why "education is not about education". The debate was much more concerned about racial identity and politics, but nothing substantive about students' learning and their educational development in school. Just to illustrate an example. In the midst of this debate, a prominent academician commented that the Chinese-educated students were "copy-cats". I have to admit, this comment is harsh and insensitive, but at the same time, I would also argue that, this comment, to a certain extent, is valid and true from a learning perspective. This is due to the fact that the learning principles and styles between the different types of school in Malaysia differ remarkably. On the one hand, the learning style in Chinese schools is more devoted to memorisation, as the basic skills to learn Chinese characters. On the other hand, students in national schools are not taught to memorise extensively. In a nutshell, we have schools in the system that have significantly different learning styles and principles. However, such educational elements did not feature in this debate, but instead, became a racial and political subject. This is exactly why “education is not about education”.
Second, the issue about teaching of science and mathematics in English. Again, the entire debate was concerned about racial and cultural identity as well as politics. Although students’ ability to learn science and mathematics seemed to be the prime concern in this matter, however, there was an absent of prove from educational research to argue the case for either the effectiveness of using English or the respective mother tongue to learn science and mathematics. Instead, politicians and policy-makers, in arguing the case to revert the policy, cited statistics indicating the low level of English proficiency among teachers. In other words, teachers were blamed for the failure of the policy, but the most important question remain unsolved, “what should the best medium for students to learn science and mathematics?”.
Third, there was also a considerable amount of debate about the SPM examination. Personally, the decision to limit the number of subjects a student is allow to sit for in the examination, was a sensible decision. This limitation, has in a way, reduce the emphasis of examination and scoring A’s in our education system. However, from the education perspective, there remain rooms for more positive development. The ideal case of examination should provide students with more freedom to choose what they want to learn and pick their subject accordingly. Despite the limitation to only 10+2 subjects, the SPM examination remains rigid in terms of the flexibility to mix-and-match subjects and the unchanged requirement that students will have to sit for six compulsory subjects.
Fourth, which is closely related to the third, was the issue about JPA (Public Service) Scholarship. This scholarship has attracted vast amount of debate, which overflowed into debate about ethnic-distribution and equality in awarding of the scholarship under the quota system. However, the debate failed to question some of the fundamental issues associated with the scholarship. The JPA scholarship is for university education. However, the criteria used to award the scholarship was based upon the SPM results, which is the O-levels result that only serve as the qualification into pre-university. Therefore, there was this paradox of awarding a university scholarship, based on examination that has no bearing whatsoever to the students’ performance in university. Furthermore, in the debate, it was also not clear as to whether the JPA scholarship is a need-based financial aid or it is a scholarship fro the brightest student in the country. Strangely but true, despite the confusion in these fundamental questions, Malaysians were contended to continue debating about the provision of the scholarship.
In the higher education part of the education system, there was one significant event in 2009, where for the first time in many years, a public university was allowed to autonomously select their students. In other words, students applied directly for admission into this public university. This was clearly a shift away from the centrally-controlled admission mechanism for public universities in the country. Personally, I guess this is a way forward, which ultimately, allows all public universities to openly compete among themselves for the best and brightest students. Only with such competition, public universities will have the incentive to provide quality education for the students. In a way, such direct application also allows for greater transparency in the selection and admission process to public universities
The second issue about university that took place in 2009 was the introduction of the Postgraduate Scholarships under the Economic Stimulus Package. The government offered postgraduate scholarship, as a way to tackle graduate unemployment, which presumably had gotten worse with the current economic situation. The concern to this initiative from the educational viewpoint was, while the policy aimed to tackle an economic problem, on the other hand, it is creating another educational problem in the form of credential inflation. While during the time when the economy was still performing, graduate unemployment was already a concern. Therefore, it was a concern that with this provision of the Postgraduate Scholarship, the education systems will be producing more specialised graduates with higher qualification. As such, it would be extremely hard to envisioned how the economy in this near future is going to absorb such a high number of graduates with Masters and Doctorate qualification, when in reality, these graduates might in the first place have difficulties securing an entry-level position in the graduate job market. In essence, this scholarship has hasten the Diploma Disease in the Malaysian education system.
In my humble opinion, 2009 had been a year where development had taken place without a sense of directionality. Through understanding these critical events that had played a part to shape the educational landscape of the country, I would argue that most of the changes and policies were implemented without much "educational" consideration, and more importantly, our education system as a whole had not progressed in 2009 in order to provide a better education for all Malaysians.
