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Kota Kinabalu: Thumbs-up to the State Education Department for having taken the steps to implement the Education Blueprint (2013-2025) from the perspective of enhancing the proficiency of English teachers.
Deputy Education Minister I, Datuk Mary Yap Kain Ching, said Sabah is, in a sense, leading the way in respect of English proficiency enhancement.
In her recent meeting with State Education Director Jame Alip and heads of the various sectors, one of the burning issues brought up was the pressing need to have more centres of excellence in Sabah and to intensify the teaching and learning of English.
Yap, who is Member of Parliament for Tawau, emphasised the need to revisit past best practices and apply them if they had been effective.
Her contention is that in the wild chase for change and transformation, good practices have unfortunately been forgotten.
"It is heartening to see that Jame has launched the 1Agenda, 1Hope and 1Dream programme.
"This programme leads to the department reverting to the basics by emphasising on 'teacher teaches, student learns'. Jame strongly believes in returning to basics, and agrees to going back to teaching Grammar in English lessons while engaging students in activity-based tasks," she said after a briefing by the Director on the programmes which were designed to effect the implementation of the Education Blueprint.
Two such programmes are School Improvement Specialist Coaches (SISC) and the Pro-ELT (English Language Teaching).
"It is important to enhance the teachers' proficiency in the language so that they can teach the students accurately. In fact, Pro-ELT is the Education Ministry's and British Council's Professional Development Programme for English Teachers in Malaysia."
Yap said SISC involves native speakers in coaching and mentoring English teachers in the teaching and learning of English.
"The Pro-ELT programme focuses on enhancing the English proficiency of teachers.
Students follow the set system in the teaching and learning of English.
This means they are taught using teaching materials based on their proficiency level which makes learning manageable," she explained.
Principal of SM La Salle, Julia Willie Jock, said she was proud of being singled out for development of the English proficiency enhancement programme with the TESL (Teaching of English as a Second Language) teachers. She is a national trainer on TESL.
"I am humbled by the Deputy Education Minister's confidence in me. We are working on it and hope to get it off the ground soon," she said when contacted.
The Education Ministry had focused on four initiatives under the National Education Blueprint (2013-2025) in the first 100 days of this year as directed by Deputy Prime Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin who is also Education Minister.
These were introducing the School Improvement Partners (SI Partners) Plus and School Improvement Specialist Coaches (SISC) Plus in Kedah and Sabah in an effort to guide teachers in the subjects of Bahasa Malaysia, English and Mathematics, especially at schools in Band Five, Six and Seven; Evaluating the 70,000 English Language option teachers through the Cambridge Placement Test (CPT), after which the teachers would be divided into three categories based on their test results; Implementing the Parents Engagement initiative in 10,000 schools to build awareness, support and cooperation among parents; and Launching the e-Guru video (a collection of the best teaching methods employed by excellent teachers in the classroom).
