PUTRAJAYA: — The Education Ministry will focus on four initiatives under the National Education Blueprint 2013-2025 in the first 100 days of this year, said Deputy Prime Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin Thursday.
The first initiative will be introducing the School Improvement Partners (SI Partners) Plus and School Improvement Specialist Coaches (SISC) Plus in Kedah and Sabah in the effort to guide teachers in the subjects of Bahasa Malaysia, English and Mathematics, especially at schools in Band five, six and seven.
“The two programmes will benefit the school heads, principals and teachers. For example, through the SISC Plus, teachers have the opportunity for in situ training directly, according to their needs,” he said in the ministry’s New Year message delivered here.
Muhyiddin, who is also Education Minister, said the second initiative was to evaluate 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.
“Part-time training will be given to teachers who do not meet the proficiency level set. Within these first 100 days, the ministry is ready to train 5,000 English language teachers,” he said.
While regarding the early part of 2013 as a critical period, Muhyiddin said the Parents Engagement initiative in 10,000 schools to build awareness, support and cooperation among parents would also be implemented.
The fourth initiative is launching the e-Guru video to be watched at all schools and this will be introduced this month through the new professionalism development programme by creating an e-Guru video library that provides a collection of the best teaching examples.
“Through the e-Guru video, each teacher will get the practical image of the best teaching methods employed by excellent teachers in the classroom, and we hope they will benefit from this to see to the success of the policy on Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics,” Muhyiddin said.
He said while the ministry focused on the four initiatives, the other initiatives under the blueprint would not be sidelined and should be achieved during the first wave of 2013, including efforts in building high order thinking skills (HOTS) among students.
In this regard, he said, the ministry would carry out HOTS training for 31,000 Forms One, Two and Three science and mathematics teachers and through this, hopefully 20 per cent of questions for the Ujian Pencapaian Sekolah Rendah (UPSR) and Penilaian Menengah Rendah (PMR) examinations would be questions of high-thinking level.
Muhyiddin said the i-Think programme, meanwhile, would focus more on learning, mastering skills and raising capacity to answer high-level questions, and for this purpose, 2,500 teachers and students from 500 schools would be trained.
He said raising students’ leadership capability at school and the quality pf teachers would also be given attention through Linus 2.0 encompassing English language literacy, standards and teachers’ package, as well as the implementation of the new Continuing Professional Development Plan.
BERNAMA.
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