As one reviews the Eighth Malaysia Plan (8MP) closely, the document starts to reveal flaws, contradictions and more generally, some of the difficulties that come with over-ambition.

Human resource development enjoys a prime position in the 8MP. This area of activity, which includes education, has been allocated RM22.7 billion. Naturally, one is then attracted to comment on this area.

Some of the objectives that the government has set for human resource development include:

- expanding the supply of highly skilled and knowledge-based workers,

- increasing accessibility to quality training and education,

- improving the quality of education and its delivery systems,

- encouraging lifelong learning;

- increasing the supply of science and technology manpower.

This is a commendable list of objectives. It is good that the government is willing to review the remuneration package for teachers. It is also good that the facilities and support services for rural and remote schools will be improved. It is time this is done in a planned and adequate manner.

Equally welcome is the government's intention to build more schools at all levels. One hopes that these plans will translate into action.

Disgruntled teachers

Presently, the educational system carries a large number of disenchanted, disgruntled teachers. Teachers justly complaint that the bulk of their time is taken up in performing administrative and clerical chores.

A further portion of their energy is sapped in trying to manoeuvre through a system where there is no mechanism for controlling student indiscipline.

The newspapers revel in this situation. They thrill (or shock) readers with reports of gangsterism in schools.

Parents, for their part, complain of teachers who are disinterested in their jobs. The newspapers go a step further and inform us of teachers who abuse students. The occurrence of such events may be small, but they should not have occurred at all. Hopefully, these problems will be set right during the 8MP period.

Another complaint that is levelled against the present education system (at the school level), is the uncreative and unimaginative manner in which information and skills are imparted.

A measure of blame must be cast on the teacher training system. There are teachers entrusted with children who have not heard of Piaget and who think that Montessori is the brand name for a kindergarten franchise chain.

Ingenuity comatose

It is not possible to march towards a knowledge-based economy if the delivery of education at the school level is foundering. Unless a sense of adventure, creativity imagination and wonderment are inculcated at the school level, we will produce excellent production operators and technicians.

We will produce engineers who can take instructions, but who would be incapable of innovations and inventions.

Our country's Vision 2020 cannot be achieved if we have a narrow vision of education. At present the focus is on setting and passing examinations.

Another difficulty with the government lies in its obsession with the myth of free market efficiency. Education has fallen victim to this myth.

The government has encouraged the proliferation of private colleges. The 8MP states that the government plans to encourage the private sector to build more schools and expand their capacity.

The rich should have a right to exclusive education. But that should not absolve the government of its responsibility to provide high quality education to the public. The government should not shirk from its responsibility in this area.

Hopefully, the government will not equate private sector involvement in education with the right to shrink its role in providing quality education.

Intellectual activity

The government should concentrate its efforts on providing sound, quality education for its own citizens. Only after having achieved this, should the government plan to achieve higher targets.

One issue regarding education in the 8MP which one finds questionable, relates to the opening up of 'branch campuses by reputable foreign universities'.

First, one wonders why the existing public universities cannot cooperate on a wider basis with reputable foreign universities. Staff exchange programmes, for one, can raise the level of intellectual activity.

Second, one wonders why the government cannot open new public universities on a collaborative basis with reputable foreign universities.

The plan to open up branch campuses is suspect. It makes more sense to upgrade the local public universities. This can be done by attracting people capable of better research, by providing better incentives for those capable of better research, and among other measures, providing better facilities for research.

The government cannot defend the case for branch campuses by using quality as an argument. In fact, this only appears to be a legitimate excuse to downsize the government's involvement in the provision of quality education as a public good.

That aside, the opening of branch campuses could very well degenerate into a scheme where the rich (or otherwise sponsored) students will have access to quality education while the 'commoners' among the student population are handed a 'common' education.

The state of education in Malaysia needs to be re-evaluated. Urgent reforms need to be put in place. Some of these reforms fall within the ambit of the 8MP.

Unfortunately, the 8MP also contains seeds within it that could result in the unequal distribution of education. Let us hope that the noble intentions expressed in the 8MP triumph over the thoughtless plans.

SHANKARAN NAMBIAR is an economics lecturer at a private institution in Penang.