This article first appeared in Forum, The Edge Malaysia Weekly, on January 11 - 17, 2016.

ANALYSTS are predicting that economic and social disruption resulting from the fall in oil prices could shape the fate of oil-exporting countries for the near future. Malaysia is not exempt from these shocks, and the cuts in Budget 2016 affecting education, subsidies and essential services should drive us to focus on building the capacity to thrive in a post-oil economy.

The question that must be asked is how Malaysia’s development will hold up in a world that is being transformed by innovation, globalisation and polarisation faster than we can adjust to the changes. Associated with the current dilemma is the poser, how will the workforce be affected by this churn?

Certainly, economic shocks are taking many forms in today’s globalised economy, with disruptive innovations, for example, rewriting the rules for everyone from taxi drivers (thanks to Uber) to telephone companies (hello, Skype) to hotels (welcome, Airbnb).

In a world where old jobs are disappearing quickly and new business models are showing exponential growth, the future looks both exciting because of the possibilities that are unfolding and frightening in terms of the speed at which traditional systems are becoming obsolete.

What is in store for new job seekers and how can they thrive in this transforming economy?

In a recent article for Project Syndicate, entitled “Education in an uncertain world”, Andreas Schleicher, the Special Adviser on Education Policy to the OECD Secretary-General, lays out the challenge:

“Education needs to focus on improving how students think, work and embrace technology, and on providing the social and emotional skills needed to collaborate with others.

“Today, value is often created by synthesising disparate bits of information. And for that, workers need more than technical knowledge; they must be imbued with curiosity, open-mindedness and the ability to make connections between seemingly unrelated ideas.”

If this is where the world is heading, it’s quite pointless really to cling to the old yardsticks, such as how many distinctions a student scores in examinations. Now, it’s no longer about how well you learn, but what you can do with knowledge that counts.

At least, we know that the Malaysia Education Blueprint 2013-2025 is aiming in the right direction, although it may be easier to visualise the new paradigm than to actualise it. Among the stated goals of the blueprint is to introduce standard curricula in 2017 that place greater emphasis on promoting higher order thinking skills,such as creative thinking, innovation, problem-solving and leadership.

However, the new order is so far removed from the current reality that nothing less than a tectonic shift must take place before the desired goals can have a decent chance of being realised. For example, independent assessments of Malaysia’s ambitions in educational transformation follow a familiar pattern. While noting the Malaysia Education Blueprint’s lofty aims, the OECD’s latest economic outlook report for the region suggests that “further efforts are required on monitoring achievements and quality assurance”.

The language used obviously suggests that there are noticeable gaps between the stated objectives and measurable outcomes.

An earlier OECD report (2013) on Southeast Asia’s economic outlook recommends that policies to raise the performance of Malaysia’s education system should focus on four critical areas. Briefly stated they are:

• The quality of those entering the teaching profession needs to be improved by making teaching a profession of choice instead of a profession of last resort;

• Performance incentives for teachers need to be strengthened by replacing the current system of permanent tenure with performance-based contractual employment;

• Preschool enrolment needs to be expanded and the quality of the preschool programme improved; and

• More resources need to be allocated to poorer performing rural schools in order to narrow the achievement gaps between urban and rural schools.

Indeed, the Malaysia Education Blueprint covers most of these areas and others like national identity and ethics and spirituality. However, it holds back on replacing permanent tenure with performance-based employment, leaving open the question of whether this could be a significant barrier to the improvement of teaching calibre.

Further, the blueprint identifies 11 shifts that must occur for the education system to be transformed to meet current aspirations. These shifts cover the strategic direction of Malaysia’s education policy as well as aim to address operational issues that contribute to the country’s serious underperformance.

These shifts require such huge changes in the performance of all stakeholders from the Education Ministry to the larger society that if all goes as planned, the Malaysian experience in education will be a wonder to behold.

In the meantime, new entrants into a challenging job market need to develop the right competences by other means. Evidence suggests that household income levels have a direct relationship to educational outcomes, so young people in urban, higher middle income-families are much better placed than their poorer rural peers to help themselves get ahead in the chase for quality jobs.

Given the acute shortage of job seekers with the desired skill sets, with employers taking four weeks on average to fill vacancies for skilled workers, as a World Bank report notes, businesses have a direct interest in linking up with tertiary institutions to help students develop market-relevant expertise.

Clearly, getting Malaysia’s workforce up to speed in the innovation age will require all stakeholders to pull together for a common cause. If that is not yet happening, fixing the issues that are sending us in disparate directions must be given the highest priority lest the economic turbulence of these times turn us into so much flotsam in the whirlpool of change.

R B Bhattacharjee is associate editor at The Edge 

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