The reason why nearly three quarters of the nation’s secondary school were ranked poorly in the 2010 school improvement programme report was due to the Education Ministry’s “high standards”.

“We set very high standards. We don’t want to compromise on quality,” Deputy Education Minister Wee Ka Siong told reporters at the Parliament lobby today.

azlan The report, part of the Najib administration’s ambitious Government Transformation Programme (GTP), stated that 70 percent of 2,128 secondary schools in the country scored below the a minimum 60 percent mark.

Wee said that the ministry “will not lower standards” to enable schools be scored higher in the coming reports.

“We don’t want to please everybody by lowering our standards and later on to say we have achieved so much.

“We will not compromise the quality we have certain standards set that we follow. We want the schools to achieve that. Therefore, the schools have ample of room for improvement.

“I hope they can take this as a challenge to improve on our weaknesses,” he said.

Report to remain under wraps

To a question, Wee said the report, which is only meant to be circulated internally, may be open to the public in the future.

“At this juncture it is because we are trying to establish a (better) system but later on we might consider (making it public),” he said.

Wee said that every state education departments and district education department have been briefed on the results of the survey and the report.

“Most of them have been informed on whether their schools falls under Band 1, Band 2 or Band 3.”

The bulk of the assessment points for the school improvement program comes from grade point averages of the previous year’s national examination results.

Thirty percent of the points will come from self-assessment using the Board of School Inspectors Malaysia standard.