Calling the survey and the group that carried it out “unfair and irresponsible”, union secretary-general Wang Heng Suan said the percentage of those surveyed was only 0.003% of the Malaysian population, and thus the findings were not only inaccurate, but also wrong.
He added many teachers had expressed disgust over the survey and have rejected the findings.
Wang said such inaccurate and blatantly wrong findings in a survey was not fair to the hundreds of thousands of teachers in Malaysia who work extremely hard, especially during this difficult time of the Covid-19 pandemic.
“This survey is absolutely unfair as it did not cover enough respondents nationwide. Had the number been much bigger, I am confident the results would have been different.
“Such unfair surveys will only tarnish the image of teachers and subtly influence the public to have a negative perception of the profession. People won’t be aware of the actual number of respondents but will form conclusions just reading the headlines and the first few paragraphs,” he told FMT.
On Tuesday, reports quoting a survey by an NGO said women aged 18 to 30 regularly face sexual harassment, with 44% of them saying that they had witnessed their teachers making sexually provocative jokes.
While 45% of the respondents claimed that they had not witnessed sexually provocative jokes by a teacher, 11% said they were uncertain or could not recall if they had heard it when they were in school.
The nationwide survey by the Centre for Governance and Political Studies (Cent-GPS) in collaboration with the All Women’s Action Society (Awam) also asked the 1,056 women if they had experienced sexual harassment in their day-to-day lives.
Wang urged groups undertaking future surveys to be more honest and conduct comprehensive studies which involve a more realistic cross-section of the population, including teachers, students and parents.
“The majority of teachers out there are taking their jobs seriously with the primary aim to educate students.
“Teachers are constantly upgrading themselves in dealing with the sudden advent of digital classrooms and new teaching applications and tools. They have very little time to indulge in sexism or crack inappropriate jokes,” he said.