PROVIDE teachers with extra incentives to help them purchase data and other Internet facilities to aid in the home-based teaching and learning (PDPR) method.
“Don’t burden teachers with secretarial work and create user-friendly application on mobile devices to ease the process,” former Education Minister Maszlee Malik said, in a Facebook post.
With Prime Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin announcing a new movement control order (MCO 3.0) across the nation, schools were ordered to close until further notice due to rising number of infection cases.
Opposition leaders have been calling for the Government to get creative on educating schoolchildren, adding prolonged school closure is creating a “lost generation”, where kids are losing out on studies, which may create a huge problem in the future.
Touching on the matter, Maszlee said that many teachers are using their own money to purchase additional data and other devices to aid the PDPR process, on top of helping their own kids.
He added that this was especially true for students who have little access on Internet coverage, with teachers using their own funds to purchase learning materials for their students.
“This sacrifice by teachers is rarely spoken by anyone unlike other frontliners. Perhaps that is why only handful of teachers have received the vaccine shots to date,” he opined.
Maszlee added that the Education Ministry (MOE) should also get proactive and guide teachers on new pedagogy based on current dynamics, using the methods used by advanced nations.
“That is why we need data collection and coordination to be done by administrative staff at district education department (PPD), state education department (JPN) and MOE itself, not teachers.
“Teachers are already stretched out, especially during this health crisis period. Therefore, they should not be burdened with secretarial works, such as giving two to three reports to separate agencies,” the Simpang Renggam MP stated.
He added that teachers should only be reporting to their respective school principals alone, and the latter should send the reports to the respective agencies for further action.
“By now, MOE should have developed a phone-based application to aid the process. In fact, the Government did embark on such a project on July 1, 2019 but the initiative was abandoned when Perikatan Nasional (PN) took over federal powers,” Maszlee remarked. – May 15, 2021.
