The teachers promotion scheme announced by Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak today is a permanent feature and is not being introduced because of the upcoming election, said Deputy Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin.

Muhyiddin, who is also education minister, said improvements to the teaching scheme had been done before and would continue in meeting the need for a transformation of the profession's delivery system for the better.

"We can stress that the teaching profession receives just treatment," he said after opening the 40th national-level Teachers Day celebration in Kuching.

He also thanked the prime minister for giving special attention to the teaching profession athough the government was taking steps to control the nation's financial deficit.

He said the announcement by Najib through video-conferencing at the celebration themed 'Teachers Catalyst of Education Transformation' was very good news indeed for teachers.

Najib announced five promotion methods for the teaching profession which will take effect next year.

They are promotions to fill vacancies, special promotion to a holder of a post ( Khas Untuk Penyandang ), time-based promotion, promotion for excellent principals or headmasters and promotion for excellent teachers.

Muhyiddin further said that his ministry would continue holding discussions with the Public Services Department to come up with more effective promotion methods, particularly for graduate teachers who are placed in the diploma category.

Saying he was very proud of the performance shown by teachers, Muhyiddin said if previously it was difficult to measure teachers' performance, the ministry now had the key performance indices (KPI) approach to evaluate performance. 

He said the government had taken pains to make a success of the transformation of the national education system which included the implementation of the National Key Result Area (NKRA) for education.

In terms of achievements under the NKRA for education, he said the ministry succeeded in increasing enrolment at pre-school level to 72.42 percent, exceeding the 72 percent target set for 2010.

Literacy rate rises to 85 percent

He said the literacy rate of pupils had also increased from 64 per cent to 85 percent while the numeracy rate rose from 73 percent to 91 percent.

“We also announced a list of 20 schools as High Performance Schools last year and 23 more were accorded the status this year,” he said.

He said he was all the more proud that geographical factors did not stand in the way of teachers delivering the goods.

“The success of SK Ulu Lubai, a school in the interior of Sarawak, in getting recognition as a High Performance School is proof of this,” he said, adding that on top of this, the ministry's incentive scheme for high performance had 1,400 teachers qualifying after they exceeded the targets set for them at their respective schools. 

 - Bernama