This article first appeared in The Edge Financial Daily on April 1, 2020

KUALA LUMPUR: Teach For Malaysia volunteers will be helping to create innovative and engaging online lessons for YTL Foundation’s Learn From Home Initiative, aimed at helping to ensure all students in Malaysia can continue learning from home during the movement control order (MCO) period.

According to a joint statement by Teach For Malaysia and YTL Foundation, the former's fellows and alumni will work with FrogAsia under the initiative on lessons covering mathematics, science and English for Standard One to Form Five.

Teach For Malaysia is an independent, not-for-profit organisation whose objective is to provide the opportunity for children in Malaysia to attain an excellent education.

It partners with the ministry of education to recruit outstanding graduates and young professionals to become full-time teachers in high-need schools through its two-year fellowship programme. Active since 2012, it is also one of the 50 partners of the global education network Teach For All.

“Fellows and alumni involved are leveraging their invaluable experiences, teaching in high-need government schools across the country to create content easy for students to follow and engage with, regardless of their levels of proficiency in the subject matter. This is to achieve the objective of ensuring no child is left behind in education,” the statement read.

“Bringing online learning to our most challenged communities resonates with Teach For Malaysia’s mission and core values, on top of ensuring continuity of teaching in the schools where our Fellows are placed," said Teach for Malaysia chairman, Tunku Ali Redhauddin ibni Tuanku Muhriz.

"To all parents and students, I would encourage you to access online learning resources such as the FrogPlay Mobile App to keep everyone learning, during this unprecedented time,” he added.

The lessons, according to the statement, will be tailored to address the part of national school curriculum that students will miss over the coming weeks of school closure. These lessons will be available at https://ytlfoundation.org/learn.

Together with the FrogPlay mobile application, they can be downloaded for free regardless whether parents have registered for Yes 4G subscriber identification module (SIM) cards under the Learn From Home initiative, as long as they have an Internet connection and a smartphone or device.

Launched on March 25, the initiative enables online learning from home by leveraging YTL Communications Sdn Bhd' Yes network and FrogAsia's content and digital platforms.

Under the programme, parents can register for free Yes 4G SIM cards offering 40 gigabytes of data to access the learning resources and the FrogPlay mobile application, with more than 5,000 revision quizzes.

The initiative has received overwhelming response, with most registrations from lower-income communities in semi urban and rural areas, the statement said.