Teach For Malaysia trustee Chen Li-Kai said while academic results were not the best predictor for teaching quality, more needed to be done to enhance the professional training of educators in the country.
“Prior to the blueprint, in terms of percentage of teachers entering the teacher training institute, 70% had zero to 3As in SPM.
“This is not to say academic results are the best predictor of teaching quality.
“But I think one of the big shifts was shifting towards having at least 70% of the teaching intake have at least 7As in SPM.
“That was one step in terms of dramatically increasing the quality of our teaching intake,” he said in a G25 talk titled “Reflections On The Malaysia Education Blueprint”.
Chen said there was a need to enhance professional development and ways to coach them in pedagogy (teaching methods), and ensuring consistency in teaching. That would be an important focus going forward, he added.
He said there was an urgent need to transform teaching to the profession of choice, not as one that was one of “last choice”.
Chen said with at least 50% of the 400,000-odd teachers and assistants teaching for the next 20 years, there must be more effort taken to help them improve through better teaching methods.
“That is the big challenge. It is the single biggest lever because unless we improve pedagogy and the quality of instruction in the classroom, nothing done at the ministry level in terms of policy could match up.
“The most important thing is to improve teaching quality and investing in the education system. It is also not how much we spend, but what we spend it on,” he said.
Former minister and technocrat Idris Jala said despite shortcomings, there were good teachers from the teachers’ training institutes.
He said the distinction between a good teacher and a bad teacher was in their thinking. So the government should speak to the best teachers and replicate them elsewhere.
“You could pull out the best teachers in say, geography, history, and math and interview them.
“Ask them to reveal their teaching methods and codify that. Then that could be used for the rest of the 400,000-odd teachers.
“In this way, we will make progress in leaps and bounds. It is not about the curriculum, it is the way the subjects are taught,” Idris said.
According to the Malaysia Education Blueprint 2013-2025, the candidates selected for teachers’ training institutes are evaluated on a range of factors including attitude, aptitude for teaching, and personality.
The blueprint states that candidates must have at least three distinctions and three credits in SPM to be a trainee teacher pursuing an education degree.
The education ministry, however, now states it is prioritising applicants with a minimum of seven distinctions, especially as teacher trainees with better results were inducted in 2012, prior to the blueprint being adopted.