Low quality Malaysian education more alarming than household debt, says World Bank economist

BY SHERIDAN MAHAVERA
March 25, 2014

World Bank economist Frederico Gil Sander says Malaysia's poor education system more worrying than household debt. – March 25, 2014.The poor quality of Malaysia's education system is more worrying than the level of debt in its households, said a World Bank senior economist in Kuala Lumpur today.

This is because the country's substandard education system would affect the pool of skilled talent it needs to grow its economy to become a highincome nation, while high household debt is not necessarily a problem if the economy continues to grow and citizens are gainfully employed.

Dr Frederico Gil Sander, who is senior economist for Malaysia, said Malaysians should be "alarmed" that their children were doing worse in school than children in Vietnam, a country that is poorer than Malaysia.

"Rural Vietnamese students do better than Malaysian students," said Sander, when met a forum that is part of the Global Malaysia series organised by the Economic Transformation Programme.

Sander was referring to a world student performance assessment test called PISA which had measured how students in 65 countries did in mathematics, science and reading. According to PISA's 2012 results Malaysian students scored below average or ranked 52 out 65. In contrast, Vietnamese students ranked 17 out of 65.

Malaysia's poor PISA results spotlighted the weakness of Malaysia's school system, despite the fact that education gets the largest share of funds every year from the national budget.

Critics have pointed out that the PISA results contradicted the government's insistence that Malaysia had a world class education system. Critics have also questioned the real worth of the Sijil Pelajaran Malaysia (SPM) which produces many students who scored As, but who can't compete with their peers from Singapore, China and Taiwan.

Gil Sander said an efficient education system should be decentralised to give more power to schools to make their own decisions based on their local circumstances.

"At the same time, parents should be provided with information on the performance of each school in their area so that they can send their children to the best schools," he said.

On the other hand, Gil Sander claimed that Malaysia's rate of household debt is not nessarily bad, so long as the economy keeps growing and incomes keep rising.

"Low levels of debt could be an indicator of no access to finance, but if a person borrows money to buy a car to go to a good job, that is not a bad thing.

"The important thing is that salaries keep rising," he said. – March 25, 2014.

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Saturday, March 22, 2014

Shhh! SPM grade marks a government secret

Is an 'A' in the recently released SPM results really worth an 'A'? It's a government secret, laments PKR vice-president Nurul Izzah Anwar.

Nurul said the government's refusal to release the exact marks for specific grades meant that the real achievement of students' cannot be evaluated.
"How can we be confident that the results are good when the passing and grade marks in the examination are considered secret under the Official Secrets Act?

"We should have the right to evaluate how far these results fulfilled our national education achievement targets," she said in a statement today.

On Thursday, the SPM examination results were released with 13,970  achieving straight As compared to 13,720 students last year.

Despite the rosy results, Nurul pointed out that they have not been consistent with international benchmarks such as the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMMS) and Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA).

She noted that according to TIMMS, Malaysia's mathematics and science performance had plunged from 16 to 26 place and 22 to 32 place respectively in the last 12 years as at 2011.
In the Pisa 2012, Malaysia ranked 52, 53 and 59 for Mathematics, Science and reading respectively, far behind Vietnam which ranked 17, 8 and 19 for the same subjects. (Note : Out of 65)

"Clearly, the SPM results give a blurry picture that does not reflect the real state of our education.

"Malaysia clearly cannot compete internationally. Is SPM manipulated by the government as a smokescreen for the rakyat?" she said.

Nurul said she had last week written to the Education Ministry for a bi-partisan discussion among stakeholders to overcome these problems.

“The crisis of educational contradiction necessitates that the government take a more open and inclusive approach in drafting education policies so that eminent local and international academics can come up with the best solutions," she said.