Friday 29 Mar 2024
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This article first appeared in The Edge Financial Daily on May 30, 2018

Individualised attention, graduating early and an internationally recognised syllabus are among the positive factors cited by those choosing to put their children in homeschooling centres. On the flip side, a lack of facilities, unqualified teachers and a shortage of extracurricular opportunities have been said as some of the problems that homeschooling students face.

Tunku Munawirah Putra, honorary secretary of Parent Action Group for Education (PAGE) Malaysia, said PAGE supports IGCSE — often used by homeschooling centres — as a parental choice. Compared with the Sijil Pelajaran Malaysia, she said IGCSE is “generally a much better syllabus where critical thinking skills are promoted instead of rigid rote learning”. “This choice is free of political biases and sudden changes in syllabus. It also provides students with the flexibility to choose the minimum subjects to enter foundation courses,” Tunku Munawirah said.

Ng Kim Huat, country director of Malaysia for Cambridge Assessment International Education, said the October 2016/June 2017 IGCSE examination sitting recorded 8,795 candidates, up 40% from the previous sitting of 6,294.

“The percentage of private candidates over the past five years is about 10% of the total number of candidates,” Ng added.

This means there may be about 880 private candidates who sat for the IGCSE certification last year, and many of them may be students from homeschooling centres, which tend to register their students as such.

However, not everyone agrees with the homeschooling centre system. For example, 20-year-old Hannah Chin, previously a homeschooling centre student who completed her IGCSE at age 15.

“Academically, the school provided for me by giving me the opportunity to graduate quicker. However, in a government school you gain crucial soft skills by being involved in extracurricular activities. The social aspect and interaction with a wider community is extremely important for a child’s development,” Chin said.

Completing secondary education at ages 12 to 14 is not the norm in our education system. However, STARS International Academy founder and principal Sasikumar sees nothing wrong with it. “If a student is attached to the working environment earlier, it would give him a leg up in the working environment amid an increasingly competitive landscape.’.”

However, Belinda Lim, a Monash University student, has observed that younger students generally find it more difficult to cope in college or university level. “Because of the wide age gap, these younger students find it difficult to connect with peers far older than them. This is detrimental to their studies as they would suffer in group projects.

“Further, I have observed many of them are unable to cope as they have been spoon-fed in their homeschooling centres, which did not adequately prepare them for the independence and maturity in thinking required for university,” Lim said.

Eduseeds Sdn Bhd founding chairman Kevin Gan Muk Chun said he attempts to tackle these issues by teaching his students to be independent via self-directed learning. “With self-directed learning — where a chunk of the learning is based on the child’s initiative to complete his checklist — we aim to teach them (students) to be independent and to find resources themselves,” he said.

 

‘Regulation needed’

High teacher attrition rate, or a lack of quality and focus in teaching, are also some of the complaints by parents about homeschooling centres.

Sasikumar said a lack of regulation is a persistent problem in the sector. That is a question that needs to be answered. The government needs to provide a different licence or at least show their involvement to observe and regulate homeschooling centres’ quality.”

According to Gan, most teachers at homeschooling centres would just skim through the textbooks and focus on papers from the past year. “This teaching method is called ‘rote learning’. They would teach you how to score in your exams but would not actually teach a child [how] to increase their confidence. Academic success is important, but it should not be the only focus of a quality education system.”

Tunku Munawirah, meanwhile, said “there is no one-size-fits-all in education” and she urges parents to make an informed decision on the matter. “Parents need to play a role to ensure this choice [of education] is suitable for their children, and that it can be followed through to the path of further education.”

 

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