The Malaysian Education Blueprint(2013- 2025) is the latest revolution made by the

Ministry of Education to improve the Malaysian education system to be able to compete

with the other high performing education systems around the world. The blueprint
outlines what considerations need to be taken when deciding what a highly successful
education system is and how we can accomplish this, in order to cater the need of all
Malaysians properly, and also to prepare the Malaysian nation to perform at an
international level? The aspirations in the Malaysian Education Blueprint will help to set
a stage of transformation to the Malaysian education system, some of the main focuses
of the education blueprint are the need for greater focus on knowledge, thinking skills,
leadership skills, bilingual proficiency, ethics and spirituality. Now, teaches are seen as
the 'human construction’ and have the great responsibility of building the future nation,
acting as second educators to the children after their parents.

The first aspiration on the education blueprint is development of leadership skills among
students. Leadership skills are trained slowly among students when they are young. One
of the key skills in becoming a good leader is that they need to have good listening skills
(Hess, 2007). In the classroom, teachers need to train the students to master the listening
skills in learning. Teachers have to make sure that the students are actually paying
attention to their learning and also are able to use information given to them by the
teacher to apply in their work and solve any problems they cannot understand from the
text books. This is because in the learning process, when the students are listening to
information presented, it will train them to have the skill to tackle the main ideas from the
information (Hess, 2007). For students who always misbehave, alerting them that they
should be listening in class prevents them from being mischievous, but also helps the
student in attaining listening skills by focusing their mind (Maynard, 1993).

Another key aspect of developing leadership skills is effective communication (Hess,

2007). In the classroom, teachers need to teach the students to say what they mean and
express themselves in appropriate manner so that other people may understand them.
When teaching, teacher should always ask the students to explain their answer. By doing
so it helps them improve communication; it also indirectly trains them to improve their
listening skills which help to overcome communication problems (Maynard, 1993).

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Leadership skills help children develop confidence in their ability and to take
responsibility for their actions(Maynard 1993), Cooperative learning, group discussions
and other team based learning processes helps students develop their leadership
skills(Janine, 2011). In team work, everyone is the leader; they can give opinions and
giving their explanation to others. The group work trains the students to listen to
instructions clearly before they proceed with any action or conversation, they will need to
work as a team to accomplish the task successfully. This teaches them that they cannot be
selfish, because they can only be successful if the whole team succeeds, not only
themselves. As a team member, it also trains the students to appreciate and utilize all the
differences such as abilities and experience everyone can bring in the group,
communicating clearly with your teammates why you think differently from them but
also accepting others people opinions. This is to make sure that no misunderstandings
happen in a group to make sure everyone works easily and efficiently. .

The second aspiration of the Education Blueprint is knowledge; it states that every child
will be fully literate and also numerate. Malaysia has implemented policies which are
providing free education for all in schooling. This is to ensure that every child gets the
basic education when they reach a certain age. With this formal education provided, it is
hopes to increase efficiency of the intellectual society. As a central learning in the
classroom, teachers are committed to students and their learning (N.a , 2011). They have
the huge responsibility to provide an atmosphere that can support students’ learning
effectively, so that all students have to equal chances and encouragement to develop their
knowledge and skills in other areas such as the arts, music, and sports. In the classroom,
teachers have to give equal opportunity to all the students to talk about themselves and
really listen to the students problems. With the feedback given by the students, it helps
the teachers to know the students well and how they feel in their lesson. This is to make
sure that all the students’ needs are being addressed so that fewer students will be left out
during the schooling time.

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In the classroom, teachers can write reflections on each lesson in the learning. Being
reflective teachers, it allows teachers to do self evaluation in teaching and also improve
their practice when planning their lesson plan by reviewing their prior teaching
( Freeman, 1989). It also helps the teachers to make changes in different approaches and
activities used in the classroom to improve teaching in the classroom to cater all the
students’ needs. With this quality teaching by the teachers, children are able to achieve
their potential, either seeking greater learning or developing other necessary skills to
assist in the society. Students will show interest and feel motivated to learn the subject
when their needs are addressed.

Another aim in the blueprint for knowledge is that students will be able to master core
subjects such as Mathematics and Science. The hope is to place Malaysia in the top third
of countries in terms of performance in international assessments, as measured by
outcomes in TIMSS and PISA. In previous learning of mathematics and sciences in
primary school classroom teachers teach solely based on the text books (Azizah, Fariza
&Azman, 2005). During the school experiment in primary school, teachers always carry
out the experiment by herself in front the class to prevent mishaps with students when
they try to handle the substances themselves. In this era of twenty first century now,
teachers can adapt ICT in teaching Sciences subject in primary schools (Christine, 2008).
In creating these new teaching tools for students, the teachers themselves also have to
become skilled in the usage of ICT equipment so that they are able to apply the skills in
the classroom learning. For example, the most recently introduced technology in
Malaysia is interactive whiteboard and smart boards in learning. If the teacher wants to
teach the effect of mixing solutions, maybe the teacher can involve the student in the
learning by asking students to come in front and choose the solution they want to mix on
the boards. All the students’ will then see the effect of mixing different types of solutions.
All this hands-on learning will help to increase and strengthen student’s knowledge of
Science (Christine, 2008). This is because they can see themselves the effect of mixing
different solutions together.

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The third aspiration is bilingual proficiency. In the targeted aims in the blue print is that
students are able to master and operationally proficient in Bahasa Melaysia and
competent in English language. In order to produce students who are competent in
English language, quality of English teachers are needed to ensure the effectiveness of
learning. Due to this, English teachers will be up skilled and also will be required expand
their exposure of the language (N.a. 2001). The Malaysia government has provided in-
service courses for the teachers to increase the teachers’ performance and also their
teaching in the class to enhance their knowledge and skills. The government also have
collaborated with the British council to provide quality courses for the teacher; this is to
guarantee that every student will be taught by a proficient English teacher. Besides this,
teachers who have yet to achieve the standard will be given intensive up skilling. With
all these intensive courses and up skilling programmes given to the teachers, it is hopes
that teacher will develop their English language proficiency and teaching skills and
knowledge to deliver quality English lesson to the students. This is to make that students’
language proficiency will be improved as well with the quality teaching delivered to the
students. When the teachers’ English language proficiency is developed, they will feel
more confident to speak and give instructions using English to the students. With the
speaking environment provided by the teacher in the classroom, it gives students
motivation and the opportunity to use English language to communicate with others.
Hence, improve students English language proficiency.

Up- skilling courses provided to the teachers will also train teachers how to plan effective
language activities compared to traditional language learning classroom. In the traditional
classroom learning, students are drill repetitively over and over again until they are able
to memorize the structural patterns. From the up-skilled courses provided, teachers will
gain more knowledge how to plan more effective speaking activities which allow
students to practise the targeted language in the classroom. Learning foreign language
without learning how to speak or apply in daily communication is unmotivated (Krashen,
1981). As the result, students seem to have no or little interest in learning how to speak
the language well since it does not help much in completing their daily tasks.

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Education in our country is continuously and consistently aiming to foster Unity among
different races in school, this is because students spend over a quarter of their time in
school. Schools are also the main support to uphold the importance of learning and
understanding the culture and beliefs of various races in one classroom (Fakhri,2012). By
strengthening Moral and Islamic education, it helps to promote ethics among the students.
They will learn to respect each other’s opinion in the classroom as well as respect for
other cultures and values. The classroom is a place for learning, sharing trust, nurturing
personal and spiritual growth and peace among the students (Hin, 2007). The most
effective way to groom high moral values to produce well-behaved students is to
inculcate them with good civic values from primary school onwards.

Teachers play important roles to educate the future generation not only by imparting
knowledge but also by producing a whole rounded generation with a higher set of values
with the ability to accept any challenges in life. In the classroom, teachers have the
responsibility to strengthen moral values and Islamic education in the school when they
are young to enforce ethical behaviour among students. When teachers are teaching
students about moral education, teachers should involve students in a real life situation,
where they can relate their problems with their current understanding about the moral
values. It helps them to understand about what is ethical and unethical using their own
moral judgment (Brown, 2007), which help the students to justify their own actions and
ideas of their own behaviours. As a result, it helps to build strong characters and
personality of the students which they are able to justify their actions which will help
them to control their own actions which not affected by them emotionally (Brown, 2007).

When students have inculcated the value of responsibility, students will be aware that any
actions they take, they will need to bare any consequences from their action whether it is
good or bad. It is very important to them when they grow up as an adult because it allows
them to face and solve problems in front of them (Hin, 2007). They do not easily give up
when facing problems. They will understand seeing things on moral grounds and have
the courage to do what is right to them to solve the problems. This allows them to control
their wellbeing to gain respect from others. In the classroom, teacher must make sure
ethical behaviour gets promoted in the classroom; teachers must talk with students who

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have bad behaviour so that students will change their behaviour before it is too late.
Justify to the students why you punish them from their action. In long term, students will
slowly realize and learn from their mistakes, when the student’s needs are well addressed
by the teachers, teachers will slowly gain trust and respect from the students in the class.

The fifth outcome in the education blueprint is thinking skills. In knowledge based
learning, the aim is to have students master a higher order of thinking skills so that they
are able to see the relationships among seemingly diverse concepts and also connect
different pieces of knowledge in their learning. This is to prepare students and also allow
them to be able to compete in this twenty first century where the demands of higher
thinking skills are required to compete globally. As teacher, we need to provide full
support for the students in the classroom to develop their thinking skills. As suggested by
Lynch ,Wolcott & Huber (2001), they stress that develop thinking skills need to be done
slowly in a stage by stage process. This is also supported by Fischer (1980) which
student’s cognitive development is developed through stages. Students might struggle to
reach a teacher’s expectation if the teachers do not understand how thinking skills are
developed (Hilary, 2001). They may assign course work or a tasks that are very complex
and beyond the students current experience. Currently teachers always emphases to the
students to think out of box when they are learning. But they do not teach students how to
think. Some students may face difficulty in relating the current knowledge with the
information presented. As a result, it will be hard for the students to think critically as
they could not make sense of the information presented. In order to help students in their
thinking skills, teachers can provide the student with teaching aids such as flash cards,
modeling or rubric which will guide the students to think deeper. When they have clues
or ideas, it helps them to tackle the issues and questions that allow them to explore
further in details of the topics (Hilary, 2001). With scaffolding and adequate support
from the teachers, students may not become overwhelmed by their poor performance but
it will help them to think properly and also justify their reason for their thinking.

Another way to improve students thinking skills is through field trips. Students need to
have various opportunities to explore new knowledge not only in the classroom but also
have the chances to learn outside the classroom (Lynch ,Wolcott, & Huber ,2001).
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Teachers can plan filed trip for the students to visit different places such as a museum or
science laboratory. This allows students to learn new knowledge and maybe develop
interests which they could not find it in a text book. It also prompts them to think
critically about what they are experiencing first-hand in the real world by using the
virtual environments. Apart from that, field trips create diverse opportunities to use
different learning styles and practice interacting with others. Through interacting with
others, it helps students to think so that they can justify their answers or give opinions to
other people.

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