By Maszlee Malik
I LIKE to refer to the posting by Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM) Faculty of Education lecturer Anuar Ahmad who produced a comment on his Facebook post entitled “PDPR: Dasar Pendidikan Yang Gagal?” (PDPR: A Failed Education System?) on July 7.
He stated that the blanket approach to home-based teaching and learning (PDPR) implemented by the Education Ministry (MOE) today has failed and will cause an increase in dropouts and education imbalance among children during the movement control order (MCO).
In his posting, Anuar has referred to an Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) report related to the approach employed by different countries to resume the children’s education during COVID-19.
Based on the OECD report published in April, studies by education experts in the OECD show the three best home-based teaching and learning approaches in most countries in the world throughout the school’s closure in their respective countries. The three approaches are as below:
- Online learning
- Distribution of notes and worksheets; and
- Education TV
Furthermore, the study also states that other methods have been utilised, such as education radio, smartphones and etc.
Nonetheless, the approach’s effectiveness apart from the mentioned approaches is much lower and a lesser choice in the majority of the countries worldwide.
Among the three approaches, online learning is the best and chosen approach. Despite that, the effectiveness of online learning for school children in those countries must depend on the two main conditions, which are:
- Quality Internet access for every educator and student; and
- Students are equipped with devices to attend the online classes.
Without these conditions fulfilled, the online learning approach will not be entirely implemented. As a result, it will significantly impact the country’s education system and can only be utilised as an alternate approach or learning aids.
This report acts as findings of the study and suggestions from education experts from OECD. They emphasise the issue of education inequality whereby it will affect the education gap among groups of students, whether be it among those who have the learning facilities and those who do not; among the wealthy and the poor, and among those who live in the cities and those who live in the outskirts especially in the rural areas.
Due to this issue, it will bring a long-term effect towards a country in the future, in terms of the economy and income gap.
Therefore, they decided that countries that cannot afford to fulfill both conditions are allowed to resume home-based teaching and learning through the educators’ and school’s efforts by distributing notes such as modules or worksheets/workbooks.
Students can learn with a manual guide/learning module and work on exercises after that. Furthermore, the exercises will be submitted to the educators for evaluation purposes.
Home-based teaching and learning in Malaysia
In Malaysia, according to a study conducted by MOE on April 18 last year, data reveals that 36.9% of students do not have access to direct devices, which restricts them from attending online classes.
This situation has caused many children to not attend online classes at home throughout MCO period. The most complicated issue is the poor Internet access that causes a majority of the children living in rural areas not to participate in home-based online teaching and learning.
Apart from the study by MOE, a study by the National Union of Teaching Profession (NUTP) and a research team from the Faculty of Education at Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM) presents evidence that most parents and educators are not ready to implement home-based online teaching and learning.
Based on this study, it is evident that utilising the online approach wholly as a primary home-based teaching and learning approach is not suitable for a country like Malaysia.
It also showed that MOE is not supposed to continue forcing home-based online teaching and learning all in one go on all educators, schools and students.
It will only cause more students to get left behind in their studies if the online learning approach resumes, as opposed to direct approach to home-based teaching and learning.
In relevance to this situation, it is inappropriate for officers from the District Education Office (PPD) and the State Education Department (JPN) to monitor educators amid the home-based teaching and learning implementation through the online method.
It will only widen the gap of education, mistreat children and parents and burden the teachers.
In reality, during MCO 3.0, the MOE still resumes the home-based online teaching and learning approach as the primary approach.
Despite saying they gave the school the “autonomy” to adapt to the situation, the MOE still issued a schedule of home-based teaching and learning according to the subject schedule, and instructions to all teachers for preparing the attendance report of the online teaching and learning students given to the PPD and JPN.
We also discover that most students who do not have a computer or a laptop have to resort to mobile phone as a replacement. A smaller mobile phone screen that cannot accommodate the needs of online activities will only affect the quality of children’s learning while impacting their eye sights.
This is the situation throughout the country. There is a state government, with the cooperation of telecommunication companies to provide mobile phones for this home-based teaching and learning to promote the online learning approach further, without looking at the efficiency of the blanket online learning and effectiveness of using the small handphone screen on students’ education and health.
In the OECD study, the use of mobile phones for home-based teaching and learning purposes is in the fourth place, not the top choice. It turns out that using this mobile phone is not the preferred approach for most countries in the world. According to the study, its effectiveness is also lower than the distribution of notes and the use of education TV.
However, due to the MOE’s decision not to consider the community’s situation, especially the poor and rural groups, this decision made the online home-based teaching and learning increasingly failing to be implemented effectively. Unfortunately, MOE does not share the reports on the effectiveness of home-based teaching and learning with the public.
If it is shared, the data will be questioned as the reporting methods being practiced are more directed towards punishing and monitoring teachers, and not for the real purpose of reporting, which is to find the best solution for education for the students, and teachers alike. – July 10, 2021.
Maszlee Malik is a former Education Minister and MP for Simpang Renggam.
The views expressed are solely of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Focus Malaysia.
