KUALA LUMPUR: Serdang MP Ong Kian Ming questioned why RM20 million in public funds was used to pay the management consultancy McKinsey and Co to prepare the National Education Blueprint —  when this money could have been used to build new schools or equip schools with science labs.

He said this was a waste of funds considering that the Ministry of Education and government departments have more capable personnel to undertake the task of producing the blueprint.

In a written reply to his question in parliament, it was stated that a total of RM20.57 million was paid to the consultancy in two stages. RM4.7 million was paid in phase one and the rest in phase two.

“There would be perhaps one or two senior partners who have done previous consulting on education-related projects but their experience is far less than the panel of experts who are in the project taskforce as well as the independent review panel,” said Ong.

“If these consultants were brought in because of their experience in the education area in other countries, very little of this was reflected in the final document.

“The international comparisons  could have been obtained by asking a reasonably intelligent final year Malaysian student to do a final year project on international benchmarking in education,” he said, noting that Mckinsey is a general management consultancy.

He added that the blueprint lists 20 “high-powered” individuals including the  director for the educational policy planning and research division Faridah Abu Hassan and National Key Results Areas (NKRA) and  National Key Economic Areas (NKEA) Director Tengku Azian Tengku Shahriman.

“Surely the Prime Minister’s Office could have utilised its many capable resources within the ministry and Pemandu to prepare this blueprint. Why waste RM20 million on using expensive management consultants?” asked Ong.

“This money could have been used to build four new schools at the cost of RM5 million each or to build more science labs,” he said.

Furthermore, he said McKinsey’s involvement in the blueprint was not even highlighted by the ministry.

He asked if the government will use McKinsey’s services in implementing the blueprint.

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This article first appeared in The Edge Financial Daily, on September 25, 2013.