MOE announces initiatives to lighten teachers' load
Education Minister Maszlee Malik today announced five initiatives aimed at lightening teachers' clerical duties some of which are to begin this month.
Maszlee said each initiative will comprise a series of short-term interventive measures designed by the ministry and the National Union of the Teaching Profession (NUTP) since last July.
Education Minister Maszlee Malik today announced five initiatives aimed at lightening teachers' clerical duties, some of which are to begin this month.
Maszlee said each initiative will comprise a series of short-term interventive measures designed by the ministry and the National Union of the Teaching Profession (NUTP) since last July.
These, he added, would be the first phase in a series of initiatives to improve educational approaches in the country.
The five initiatives are:
- - simplification of filing and documentation;
- - data and online system management;
- - preparation of their own Literacy and Numeracy Screening programme (Linus) by schools;
- - standardisation of monitoring forms and processes for teachers; and
- - coordination of school-level committees.
For the simplification of filing and documentation, the minister said three interventions would be implemented to help solve the issue of teachers having to manage the Textbook Loan Scheme (TBLS), subject files and Classroom Based Assessments (PBD).
These interventions include reducing the amount of TBLS filings required, granting autonomy to schools to decide on the number of subject files needed and how copies are stored, as well as PDB guidelines being made available online.
"The second initiative [...] will see data being collated from information sources available on the Education Ministry system.
"An online student attendance (recording) system will also be used [...] so teachers will no longer need to fill out attendance books," Maszlee said when speaking at the Universiti Putra Malaysia in Serdang (below) earlier today.
Manual record-keeping would still be available for schools without Internet access, he added.
'Just the first step'
Maszlee added that "facial recognition" such as those used by smartphones was also being studied for this purpose though it would be unlikely for the feature to be introduced anytime soon.
On the matter of Linus, Maszlee said schools could customise the programmes based on their assessment of students' needs "in line with the abolishing of Level 1 examinations (for Year One, Two and Three)".
These initiatives, he said, are aimed at ensuring teachers were no longer bogged down by clerical work.
"The last initiative will be to coordinate the forming of school-level committees to ensure those committees not relevant to the role of education be abolished
"These five initiatives are just the first step, while arrangements for the second phase (of initiatives) will involve more training and courses to ensure teachers are capable of providing the best educational approaches," he said.
Maszlee said his ministry would supervise the system used by Teacher Training Institutes (IPG) so they can be strengthened, "beyond just changing its name".
