Noor Azimah Abdul Rahim, who leads the Parent Action Group for Education, and Harry Tan, secretary-general of the National Union of the Teaching Profession, said this was bound to happen, now that urban parents are becoming more affluent and there are fewer restrictions against the establishment of international schools.
They acknowledged the superiority of private-school education and said parents would naturally want the best for their children.
“The public education system, without intervention by parents, produces generally mediocre students,” Azimah told FMT.
“While the national education philosophy aims to produce global citizens, it is far from achieving that goal.”
Azimah urged the education ministry to scrutinise how budget allocations are spent and to identify areas where resources are being wasted.
She also said the government should develop more schools under the Trust School Programme, which is a partnership between the education ministry and Khazanah Nasional’s Amir Foundation. The partnership was initiated in 2010 and its aim is to transform the national education system.
“The programme has proven that it can turn around schools as well as teachers without having to take teachers out of classrooms,” Azimah said. “Such an approach may also curb teacher absenteeism, which has a tendency to worsen if left unchecked.”
There are currently 90 trust schools nationwide. Education Minister Maszlee Malik said in July last year that the government was planning to set up more of them across the country.
Azimah said new teachers needed to be properly trained and their seniors should be receiving continuing professional development.
“We cannot be offering to train teachers from other countries when we cannot train our own teachers correctly,” she added.
Tan said he believed the public education system would improve, noting that Maszlee had been gathering feedback from various quarters and had also appointed advisers.
“Given time and funding, I truly believe that our education system will be better,” he told FMT.
However, he added, public schools would “never be able” to provide students with the facilities and programmes offered by private schools since they serve a bigger pool of students, including the handicapped, poor and stateless.
He also spoke of an advantage that public school pupils had over those attending private schools.
“Students learn that life is not a bed of roses and it takes all kinds of people to make up the world,” he said. “This ensures that the child’s life is wholesome and not skewed to the elite.”