Ikatan Guru Muslim Malaysia president Azizee Hasan said the association agrees that lazy and negligent teachers should not be promoted, but there should be a support system for these teachers before punitive action is taken.
“The root causes and problems of these teachers should be identified, and they should be provided appropriate training courses tailored to address specific needs. This allows time for teachers to address their weaknesses and strive for improvement,” he said.
“These teachers should be continuously guided by the school’s management or senior teachers, and there should also be intervention measures for teachers facing such issues.”
Azizee’s comments were in response to Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim’s announcement on Saturday that teachers who are negligent, underperforming, and undisciplined will not be granted time-based promotions.
Currently, teachers under the education ministry are afforded promotions after three to eight years depending on their appointment grades.
Azizee said time-based promotions should be contingent on specific criteria set by department heads. “We do not want promotions to be based on politics, cronyism, or favouritism. It’s crucial to establish proper and inclusive evaluation standards,” he said.
Parent Action Group for Education chairman Noor Azimah Abdul Rahim said support systems for such teachers are already in place but they take a long time to produce results.
“In the meantime students suffer. If a teacher is not competent, and has been so for many years, he should be dismissed before more damage is done to the students,” she said.
Azimah said assessments of teachers by school heads should be objective, fair and without prejudice, and be benchmarked against international standards.
She said Anwar’s plan would bring greater meritocracy into the teaching profession by rewarding only the best teachers with leadership positions, which will in turn improve the quality of education.
However, the education ministry must put its foot down with teachers who do not fulfil their responsibilities, she said.
She highlighted the case of an English language teacher in Kota Belud, Sabah, who was assigned to teach English thrice a week from January to October 2017 but who showed up for only the first two months.
Last July, three former students were awarded a total of RM90,000 in damages after they sued the former teacher and others for refusing to teach them English.
Azimah said; “He remains a teacher in the same school. What message is the ministry trying to get across when it cannot even discipline one recalcitrant teacher?”