More than mere rhetoric, the country needs a thorough reform of the Ministry of Education, which is currently held by Deputy Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin, a forum on the National Education Blueprint in Penang was told yesterday.

This proposal is one of the three building blocks recommended by a working group of experts to address the crisis in the country's education system, Centre for Policy Initiatives director Lim Teck Ghee said.

NONE Lim ( right ), a former social issues specialist with the World Bank, said the other two blocks needed to improve the education system were nothing less than a royal commission and a reformulation of the entire Education Act.

For the last 18 months, Lim has been part of the group working on a 20-year plan on how to address the country's problems.

The team - comprising about 40 scholars and a multiracial group - was convened by the Federation of Malaysian Chinese Associations and its task is to analyse the major problems affecting the country, including the education sector, he said.

"The plan of action covers the overall recommendation that our education system needs to cut through politics, bureaucracy and narrow sectarian interests to ensure that our youths can realise their full potentials," Lim told the forum.

"It calls for nothing less than a royal commission, reformulation of the Education Act and thorough reform of the Ministry of Education (MOE)," he stressed at the two-hour forum at Wawasan Open University that was attended by about 50 participants.

Other speakers on the panel were Deputy Chief Minister II P Ramasamy and Penang Institue fellows Toh Kin Woon and Wong Chin Huat and they all dissected the "11 Shifts" in the blueprint that Muhyiddin unveiled on Sept 11.

Education blueprint politically-motivated

But Lim said the blueprint, an internally-driven exercise by the MOE and involving wide stakeholder participation, may not be the way to address the various problems in the field as the outcome may be "very constricted, partial and politically-motivated".

He urged the Pakatan Rakyat to set up the Royal Commission on Education should it assume power in Putrajaya come the 13th general election.

"This should not remain mere rhetoric but should be a statement that all streams would receive equal treatment," he added.

There are currently five school streams operating under the Malaysian education system - national, national type, vernacular (Chinese and Tamil language), religious and international schools.

NONE Critics have blamed the separate streams for the country's lack of a national identity but its proponents argue that the people should be given the right to their choice of education.

Wong ( left ), an academician and researcher who is well-known for his activism in Bersih, opined that the country's education system does not respond to the needs of the society.

Instead, the education officials were introducing partisan agenda in the system, such as asking a question on whether it is illegal to participate in Bersih 3.0 in the school's SPM Moral Studies trial examination paper, Wong noted.

"We have an education bureaucracy that is not serving the interests of the nation but serves the ruling party. The solution naturally is decentralisation," Wong added, saying he applauded Shift No 6 in the blueprint, which deals with empowerment of the state and state education departments.

However, he pointed out, decentralisation would only be effective if state officials were accountable to the people.