Othman Talib, a lecturer at Universiti Putra Malaysia’s (UPM) education faculty, said the ministry should view these cases from a broad perspective, including teachers opting for early retirement.
“Imagine, until now, we have never heard of teachers admitting to lying (about students’ performance). If true, this is a very negative ‘turning point’,” he told FMT.
It was recently reported that an English teacher, Wan Maizura Kamaruddin, 53, decided to retire early due to the amount of non-teaching work she had to carry out, which eventually “forced” her to lie about her students’ academic proficiency.
“Sometimes, I had to lie when grading a student’s academic proficiency even though they could not read,” Wan Maizura reportedly said.
She admitted that she did this to ensure her reports looked good and claimed that the “majority” of teachers did the same.
Wan Maizura used to teach at SK Presint 16 (1) in Putrajaya but retired early, saying the tasks given to her were outside the scope of her duties as a teacher.
Othman said the ministry must act on the matter or risk being perceived as “condoning” the teachers’ actions. “If left unchecked, I fear this phenomenon will become a disease.”
Sources had told FMT that many teachers were worried that action would be taken against them by their school principals or district education officers if they failed to submit excellent academic proficiency reports.
Othman said teachers had been burdened with non-teaching responsibilities after the UPSR and PT3 examinations were abolished, with the education ministry prioritising classroom assessments.
For these assessments, Othman said, teachers were required to submit thousands of academic proficiency reports.
“Teachers nationwide have to fill out these reports, from Standard 1 to Form 5. The data must look good or the teacher will be deemed to have failed.
“On top of that, teachers then need to input the same data into the computer system. This is overlapping work,” he said, adding that the academic proficiency system used was unique to Malaysia.
Othman questioned why senior education ministry officials could not see how the repeated assessments and academic proficiency reports were an unrealistic burden on teachers.
The education ministry had revealed that some 4,360 teachers filed retirement applications between January to November 2021, but education minister Radzi Jidin said this was not an exponential increase compared to 2017.
However, the National Union of the Teaching Profession estimated more than 10,000 teachers had opted to retire early in recent years, far exceeding the ministry’s figures.