Critical Review

Article: Initiatives to improve learning In the article titled Initiatives to improve learning written by Suzanna Pillay for New Straits Times on Wednesday, April 10, 2013, the writer mainly highlights about how Ministry of Education implements five initiatives of the National Education Blueprint 2013-2025. This initiative is parallel to the Ministrys motive to make the education system in our country more effective and operative. More importantly, this article emphasizes about how the Ministry of Education can improve its delivery system, from the district education departments (PPD) to the ministry. The goal is to make sure that that each sector communicates with each other for progress and to coordinate the initiatives more effectively. Other than that, this initiative will ensure all 70,000 English teachers to be assessed by the International Cambridge Placement Test; while 5,000 more will be upskilled. This idea is brilliantly planned because the outcome to this test will give recognition and confirmation that our teachers are qualified and well trained. Some teachers thought that the test is carried out to find their fault, but actually it is to improve them. In order to improve the students English standard, the teachers proficiency in English must improve and must be upgraded too. Furthermore, the Literacy and Numeracy Screening Programme (Linus 2.0), will be starting at all primary schools, with the reasons to make students communicate and interact in a higher intelligence level. This is a good plan because the reading and counting skills in primary school students must be improved as they are still lacking. The data in the Ministry shows that 48,233 Level 4 students have not mastered literacy while 117,000 Level 4 students have not mastered numeracy skills. Therefore, Linus 2.0 is relevant because this problem must be overcome as early as Level 1 to make sure that all of the problems will be recognized in the early stage. This way, students will have a vast room to improve and to improve the number of students that masters literacy and numeracy skills. Moreover, the Ministry had conjured a move to ensure that parents will participate in the students learning process. The plan is to set up parent support groups at 10,000 schools nationwide and to distribute 10,000 parent engagement tool kits to encourage a better connection between schools and parents. Guidelines were given in the tool kits to give parents some idea on how they are supposed to participate in their childrens learning process. This is a very good idea, given that nowadays parents are not interested to get to know about their childrens learning process. Parents nowadays are too engaged with their job to be bothering about their childrens school activity. If they show their interest, their children will be motivated in school too. Last of all, the initiatives taken by the Ministry is very bold and comprehensive. Though, there are several recommendations that I would like to add. The Ministry could let the school set up extra class hours for students who did not fulfil the target by the end of the lesson. The extra class is conducted by volunteers from young professionals, and this can make the students focus on what they lack. If this is part of the curriculum, the students can improve more and they can have some alternative if they did not manage to achieve their target. The conclusion is, the Ministry had set up a very good plan to optimize this countrys education system and the minor effects is already taking place, such as Linus 2.0 and many more.

Article: Comparing my little school In the article titled Comparing my little school written by Thomas L. Friedman for New Straits Times on Thursday, April 4th, 2013, the writer had been explaining about how America is comparing their school with each other and with other schools worldwide. It states about how several schools in America are some of the best in the world, but also there are a lot of other schools are lagging down especially the middle-class students. Their level is lower than the disadvantaged students, mostly from lower middle class students. If this is to be compared to Malaysia, we are still a growing country that is working towards stabilization, especially in our education system. Our schools are divided according to types such as vocational school, technique school, boarding schools, public schools, and private schools. The best schools are determined by the accumulated grade that the students achieve at year end examination or by STPM, SPM, PMR, and UPSR examinations. These examinations are done to gauge the ability of the students. Nevertheless, SPM is equal to O-levels while STPM is equal to A-levels. The article highlights mostly about measuring the school in the country against other schools in other country, and in order to make our country up to the comparisons, the Government Transformation Plan had carried out Malaysian Education Blueprint. According to our Education Minister, Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin, he quoted from the World Economic Forums global competitiveness report that claims Malaysia as the 14th among 142 countries in terms of quality of education. Plus, Malaysia is claiming its spot at second rank among the Asean countries in terms of quality education. From my opinion, Malaysias education system is not at par with other world beating schools like in America, China, or Finland. Nevertheless, we still managed to send our worthy and qualified candidates to further their studies at big universities such as Harvard, Cambridge, Oxford, and many more. Our education system is still building and is still improving, but we are already at a comfortable state. We should improve more, and the Ministry of Education had already launched the Malaysian Education Blueprint. It is stated in the article that American schools can benchmark themselves against international standard through the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) to launch the OECD Test for Schools (based on PISA). Meanwhile in Malaysia, we may not compare our schools internationally as we are still constructing the modules and programmes to make our education smooth and operational. What we can do is to play the part, such as by being a better educator, a better student, or a better parent. It is easier said than done, because nowadays parents are too busy to bother with their childrens education, and teachers are also being burdened by workloads and paper works. Somehow, they are the most important part in delivering the education to children, and they have to focus on their part more. The curriculum is already planned well and the only thing needed is participation from teachers and support from parents, as they are the ones holding important roles to make sure that one day, our school can be known worldwide. It may seem a long way to go, but it is possible as long as our commitment is escalating and is steady.

Article: On course to read, write and count In the article titled On course to read, write and count written by Muhammed Ahmad Hamdan for New Straits Times on Friday, April 19th, 2013, the issue that the writer highlighted is about the Ministry of Educations new programme, Linus 2.0. This programme is the remedial programme that will help schools to improve students reading and writing skills, as well as their basic arithmetic knowledge. Firstly, they focuses the programme to be implemented on Year 1 students, because this is a form of prevention and pre-intervention to make sure that weak students are identified at the early stage. From my opinion, this is very good and will make the process run smoothly, because when the problems are detected at an early stage, this may avoid further complications. The students that had been noticed to be having problems can be corrected at the moment, with no further delay, if to be compared to the previous curriculum. Additionally, the Ministry is also focusing on the medical conditions of the students that are having problems to know if they had any learning disabilities such as dyslexia (reading disability), dyscalculia (mathematics disability) and dysgraphia (writing disability). It is stated in the article that 2,000 students were identified with symptoms of learning disabilities last year. Therefore, the students that were confirmed to have the disability were given appropriate attention and assistance in their learning so that they can cope with the curriculum at a rate suitable for them. This year, the Linus 2.0 programme had been focusing on performing medical diagnosis to all students that have problems in their learning. In addition, for the Linus 2.0, English literacy is also going to be added to screening, besides Bahasa Malaysia and arithmetic. This is to ensure that students are knowledgeable in English starting from an early level, as the outcome that is needed to be achieved is for all SPM takers to pass English in the examination. Therefore, it is relevant and it must be implemented as early as possible because English is vital nowadays. We can see that not all of the school leavers had managed to apply at better universities because of their failure in English. This is a bad outcome, because English is so important nowadays because it is known as international language. Therefore, introducing English literacy to students is a genuine move and will give good outcome to the students in the future. This article is very informative and I truly agree with the Linus 2.0 programme, as it is highly excellent. The previous programme, Linus, is very successful with rate of 99.84 per cent for literacy screening and 99.84 per cent for numeracy screening. With hope that Linus 2.0 will have a higher rate of success, the recommendation that is relevant is to focus and to give extra care and attention to students in remote areas and those from lower socioeconomic status. Plus, those who are known as slow learners should be given a more intensive learning to trigger their interest and motivation to learn and succeed. In conclusion, this article is highly informative and the Linus 2.0 programme has been well planned in each and every aspect. Hopefully, each party that is responsible to make this programme work will give all of their hearts content in order to help students succeed and thrive.