FOR Budget 2015, education lobbyists want Putrajaya to boost the professional development of teachers instead of spending on infrastructure projects that are not critical to the advancement of education.

As far as infrastructure is concerned, the basics such as clean water, electricity and proper computer and science labs should be prioritised, while plans to introduce new technology in schools should be accompanied by proper training so that the hardware is utilised.

"I think priorities need to be right – spend more on things that matter, such as basic infrastructure and also on teacher training," said Bukit Bendera MP Zairil Khir Johari, who is vocal on education matters.

"More resources need to be diverted into the recruitment and training of teachers, as they are the single most important factor influencing education outcome."

National Union of the Teaching Profession (NUTP) secretary-general Lok Yim Pheng echoed the same sentiments, urging the government to allocate more funds to improve Internet access in schools, since many teaching materials were now online.

"Internet access is a big challenge because most of the programmes now are online and many schools don’t have the facilities yet," she told The Malaysian Insider.

Education received the biggest allocation in the national budget for this year, but Zairil said it included infrastructure projects such as the 1BestariNet, which he said was not critical to
advancing education outcome.

National Union of the Teaching Profession (NUTP) secretary-general Lok Yim Pheng says more funds are needed to improve Internet access in schools, since many teaching materials are now online. – The Malaysian Insider file pic, October 9, 2014.

"As of today, there are many schools that do not utilise the infrastructure. This is the case for various reasons, including the fact that we do not have the teaching capacity to maximise these tools," he said.

"I am not against the use of technology, but the question is, is it wise to implement it across the board in 10,000 schools, when there is an obvious gap between rural and urban schools, including a gap in teaching capabilities?"

A case in point, he said, was when the government spent more than RM3 billion 10 years ago, on computer hardware as part of the teaching and learning of Science and Mathematics in English policy (PPSMI) programme, which has now been scrapped.

"Today, all the hardware has become white elephant. PPSMI has been scrapped, and the hardware is obsolete and in most cases, not even used in the first place."

Making the good, better

One group wants Putrajaya to revive PPSMI and wants the government to allocate a budget to train Science and Mathematics trainee teachers to teach these subjects in English.

"Teachers posted in schools this year are the product of the first PPSMI secondary cohort. Therefore, the excuse that teachers could not teach these two subjects in English is no longer applicable," said Parent Action Group for Education Malaysia (PAGE) chairman Datin Noor Azimah Abdul Rahim.

She said, at present, teachers of both subjects were trained in Bahasa Malaysia, Mandarin and Tamil only.

Noor Azimah also asked that the government look into a budget to be allocated for trust schools as it was a "tall order" for private companies to fund these schools.

"Although the public-private partnership under the Economic Transformation Programme requires the private sector to fund trust schools, it is a tall order, as companies would have already contributed to taxes and to divert its CSR budget to trust schools is far-fetched.

"For example, to start 50 trust schools with an average student population of 1,300 costs RM39 million a year for five years," she said.

Quality and credibility problems

Universiti Sains Malaysia lecturer Dr Sivamurugan Pandian told The Malaysian Insider that he was hoping that the Budget 2015 would include allocations for research grants to universities.

He said more funding was needed to ensure these public institutions of higher learning made a mark internationally.

"There must be more allocation for research, especially for universities with research status so that it will push our quality up in the international level," he said.

Zairil agreed, saying that Malaysian education no longer "operated in a silo" and had to compete based on quality and credibility.

"It is obvious we have a quality problem, and this is reflected in our international assessments, university rankings and so on.

"However, another problem we have is one of credibility. With the recent UPSR exam paper leaks and the continuously arbitrary policy-making that is happening in the education sector, we are fast becoming a laughing stock. How can Malaysian schools and qualifications be taken seriously?" he asked.

No Malaysian university was featured in the Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2014-2015 released recently while the top two local institutions – Universiti Malaya and Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia – opted out of the poll.

They argued that the indicators used were not suitable for Malaysian universities younger than their western counterparts and have since come under fire from opposition politicians and student groups who said rankings were a way to gauge the quality of education being offered by a university.

This is despite Putrajaya's massive spending on the education sector to "enhance education excellence", with 21% of the entire budget or RM54.6 billion apportioned for this sector alone this year.

"This is a great commitment towards education. As a percentage of GDP, it is more than double the Asean average (3.8% compared with 1.8%) and higher than even Korea, Hong Kong, Japan and Singapore," said Zairil.

"However, the big question is, are we getting an appropriate return on this investment? Despite such high expenditure year in and year out, our performance in international assessments such as TIMSS (Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study) and PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) remain mediocre.”

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