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Lee (center) speaking to reporters yesterday.

KOTA KINABALU: A new partnership between Eco World Foundation and the National Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) is rolling out a bold plan to bring improved and safer facilities to primary schools in need of assistance.

Under the new initiative, Foundation Chairman Tan Sri Lee Lam Thye said NIOSH will provide a list of dilapidated schools requiring urgent attention with funds from the Foundation.

“The Foundation is prepared to provide assistance and sponsorship to fund minor repair works of various school facilities to improve conditions and make these schools safer and more conducive for teaching and learning,” he told reporters here after presenting awards to top scorers in UPSR and PT3 Exams under the Eco World Foundation Students Aid Programme (SAP).

Lee said some of the schools are dilapidated and required urgent attention, underlining the Foundation will be working closely with NIOSH which is also expanding its Occupational Safety and Health (OSH) initiative to make schools safe places to study and work especially for students ,teachers and visitors.

He underlined the campaign views the school as a workplace in accordance with the Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSHA) 1994. Lee, who is also NIOSH chairman, said Eco World Foundation would only allocate its budget depending on the school’s needs, adding the joint-initiative was expected to start by June this year.

The Foundation’s SAP programme, award recipients each received a dictionary, cash prize and motivational books, while three teachers were presented with the Teachers Awards in recognition for their contribution to the SAP initiative.

SK Tanjung Aru 1 received the honor for being the Best School for its support and commitment of the SAP.

THE Education Ministry is confident that more schools would be recognised as cluster schools to attain its target of 500 such schools throughout the country by next year.

Ministry advisor Tan Sri Dr Abdul Rahman Arshad said that so far 297 schools in the country had been recognised as cluster schools adding that the target of 203 more schools may be achieved next year because many schools meet the criteria,” he said in Tumpat after visiting schools in Kelantan.

Dr Abdul Rahman said the ministry was looking at increasing the number of such schools so that they would be the benchmark for other schools.

He said through the system, each school which achieved excellent results in academics and co-curriculum activities, would get the recognition, assistance and best educational opportunites from the government.

The recognition would also give the chosen school the opportunity to improve its networking with other schools within the country and overseas.

BERNAMA.

Read more @ http://www.thestar.com.my/News/Education/2014/10/12/More-cluster-schools-soon/

SUBANG JAYA: — Many parents believe that teachers are responsible for students’ performance in schools.

However, parents fail to understand that teachers have limitations too.

Hence, it is important for parents to work closely with their children to improve their performance.

Schools:

There are 10,066 schools in Malaysia that include 7,733 primary and 2,333 secondary schools, according to Ministry of Education.

One of them is Sekolah Menengah Kebangsaan (SMK) USJ 12, a secondary school that caters for children of residents in the USJ3, USJ11 and USJ12.

This school received its cluster status in 2011.

A cluster school of excellence is a merit system implemented in Malaysia.

This standing is given to schools with high-performing students, which in turn gives greater autonomy in the area of administration.

Big Classes:

SMK USJ12 headmistress Zaharah Ishak said this year, 503 students have been enrolled in Form One in this cluster school, where 11 classes have been opened to accommodate this high number of students.

“We have big classes now, not less than 45 students to each class for Form One new enrolment. We have about 2,203 students from Form One to Form Five”.

The school has 11 classes each in Forms One, Two and Three and 12 classes each for Form Four and Form Five,” Zaharah explained.

This cluster school has 111 teachers to educate students of all races and from all walks of life.

SMK USJ12 is very popular among parents especially those with children who are on entering secondary school after completing their UPSR examination.

Students in the school are disciplined too, which is an important element of a cluster school.

According to the Selangor Education Department, there are more than 10 cluster schools (both primary and secondary) in the Petaling Perdana district.

Education:

Why do parents choose these cluster schools for their children?

An officer at the Ministry of Education explained that schools of excellence in the cluster schools category are result-oriented.

These schools have sufficient resources and manage their finances well.

There are 153 cluster schools in this country including 46 primary and 107 secondary national schools.

They include boarding and national-type schools in rural and urban areas.

In total, 213 schools nationwide are acknowledged for their academic and co-curriculum excellence, and 60 of them have been categorised as High Achievers.

All these schools have achieved the Band 1 standard with regard to academic programme and co-curriculum activities.

Motivation:

“I am the type who will push students to perform during their exams especially the students in examination years. We still have the Penilaian Menengah Rendah (PMR) examination for our third formers to concentrate on at least for one last time this year.

by Hazlinda Hamzah

BERNAMA.

Read more @ http://education.bernama.com/index.php?sid=exclusive_content&id=930643

PUTRAJAYA: Fifteen schools received the Cluster Schools of Excellence status from the Education Ministry Monday.

The recognition was under Phase Six of the programme which has accorded the same to 167 schools so far, said Education director-general Datuk Seri Abdul Ghafar Mahmud.

“All schools which have received the recognition will be given a special allocation to excel individually,” he said in his speech at the award ceremony here.

He said, with this concept, any school which performs well both in academics and co-curriculum would be provided with the recognition, assistance and best educational opportunity from the government.

The group of 15 comprised seven secondary schools and eight primary schools.

The secondary schools were, Sekolah Menengah (SM) Sains Sultan Muhammad Jiwa, Sungai Petani, Kedah; SM Sains, Dungun, Terengganu; SM Kebangsaan Seafield, Subang Jaya, Selangor; SM Sains Sultan Haji Ahmad Shah and SM Kebangsaan Alor Akar, both in Pahang; and SM Tinggi Kluang and SM Kebangsaan (P) Sultan ABu Bakar in Johor.

And the eight primary schools, Sekolah Kebangsaan (SK) Convent Infant Jesus 1, Melaka; SK Taman Bukit Maluri Kuala Lumpur; SK Agama Sibu Sarawak; SK Seliau Rantau Negeri Sembilan; SK USJ2 Subang Jaya, Selangor; Sekolah Rendah Kebangsaan (SRK) Seri Indera Kangar Perlis and two schools in Penang SK Minden Height Gelugor and SRK Cina Kwang Hwa.

BERNAMA.

Read more @ http://education.bernama.com/index.php?sid=news_content&id=642912

PUTRAJAYA:  The Education Ministry is targeting to create 300 cluster excellent schools (SKK) by the year 2015, Education director-general Datuk Abd Ghafar Mahmud said.

He said to date, 124 schools had been upgraded to SKK level, including 30 schools today while 26 others had already been recognised as high performance schools (SBT) earlier.

According to him, 16 SKK schools had already been moved to SBT cohort 1 schools in 2010, while 10 other SKK schools had become SBT cohort 2 schools, last February.

“I hope those in the SKK category will become the role models to guide other nearby schools and be examples of excellent schools at the national and international levels,” he said.

Abd Ghafar said this when announcing 30 schools which had been upgraded to SKK level at the SKK Phase 4 recognition ceremony here.

Johor emerged as the leading state in the SKK list with four schools while Perak, Selangor, Negeri Sembilan and Kelantan followed with three schools each, Melaka, Sabah, Kuala Lumpur and Pahang (two each) and Penang, Kedah, Sarawak, Federal territory of Labuan, Kedah and Terengganu (one each).

Abd Ghafar said the success of several schools had to be used as models like SMK Sultan Ismail Johor Bahru which had won a gold and a bronze in the 2nd Apec Future Scientist Conference, in Thailand while SMS Selangor, SMS Hulu Selangor and the Sultan Abdul Aziz Shah Islamic College (KISAS)won a gold, a silver and two bronze at the Korea Science Academy, in Busan under the Student’s Camp for Gifted in Science Programme.

BERNAMA.

Read more @ http://www.bernama.com/bernama/v5/newsgeneral.php?id=581226

THE first 20 high-performance schools have been named. There are primary, secondary and fully-residential schools among them, spread across several states. (What a proud achievement for my alma mater, SK Convent Kota, Taiping!)

But questions have been percolating in the afterglow of the initial triumph. What does such an achievement entail? What does “high-performance school” mean?

We know the official answers: these top schools get special privileges, and more autonomy and money.

But how are they different from the other types of schools announced by ministers past?

There were cluster schools and premier schools, and Vision schools and smart schools before them. And most recently, there have been “hot” schools.

Parents are understandably goggle-eyed over the variety of schools we have in the country. And these are just the public schools.

What are the implications of their children being in a particular type of school?

Does enrolment in a “hot” school necessarily mean a student will end up a Mat Rempit, triad taiko, pirate DVD seller, or worse?

Here, as a public service, is a guide to the various types of government schools we now have in our education system:

- High-Performance Schools: These are outstanding schools that will be given special annual allocations and increased autonomy in staffing, enrolment and curriculum.

- Cluster Schools: These are outstanding schools that are given special annual allocations and increased autonomy in staffing, enrolment and curriculum. (Sounds familiar?) Sixty schools were designated cluster schools two months ago, bringing the total to 120. Some cluster schools are also high-performance schools.

- Smart Schools: Simply put, these are schools equipped with Internet access and computer labs, the better to introduce students to information and communications technology as “a culture in education”. Eleven years after being introduced, smart schools are still grappling with the essence of being smart. Some smart schools are cluster as well as high-performance schools.

Confused yet? There’s more. We also have:

- Premier Schools: These are schools more than a century old. They excel in academics and co-curricular activities and have produced many national leaders, corporate figures, professionals, sportsman and scholars.

In 2008, four such premier schools — SMK Victoria and SMK Convent Bukit Nanas in Kuala Lumpur, SMK St Thomas in Kuching and SM All Saints in Kota Kinabalu — were honoured with special sets of stamps and first-day covers by Pos Malaysia Berhad. Curiously, none of them made the cut as high-performance schools.
- Vision Schools: These involved putting a national school and one or two other vernacular schools together at the same site to share common facilities such as the school canteen and sports grounds. It was hoped that the proximity of students of other races would encourage greater interaction among them and foster national unity.

This encountered strenuous resistance from Chinese schools. There are now eight Vision Schools nationwide, but only three — Subang Jaya, Lurah Bilut in Pahang and Teluk Sengat in Johor — comprise national, Chinese and Tamil schools.

- Controlled Schools: Top schools where the number and quality of students enrolled are “controlled”.

That’s not the end of it. There are also:

- Central Schools: Schools with boarding facilities to accommodate students from villages in the interior of Sabah and Sarawak; and,

- Sports Schools: Incubators for potential sports champions. Talented students are groomed in these schools with proper guidance from experts.

And, of course, there are the “hot” schools — those the police have an eye on because of indiscipline, crime and social problems among students. Needless to say, parents will not be scrambling to enrol their children in such schools.

Placing schools in specific categories will definitely raise their profile and perhaps, in time, help them attract students of all races.

The Education Ministry wants to memperkasakan sekolah kebangsaan (making national schools the school of choice), after all.

Some cluster schools are already getting a deluge of applications from non-Malay students, so much so they have waiting lists as long as that of a famous golfer’s conquests.

Parents whose children’s schools are in none of these categories should not despair, however.

A non-descript school in the backwoods is as capable of spurring its students on to unimagined heights of excellence.

All any school really needs is a capable headmaster, teachers of quality, and an active parent-teacher association.

by Chok Suat Ling.

sling@nst.com.my

Read more @ http://www.nst.com.my/Current_News/NST/articles/17HISA/Article/index_html

The Ministry of Education (MOE) has taken a bold step forward by rebranding some of the existing  schools in order to spearhead effective school improvement. One of it is the idea of having Cluster Schools (Sekolah Kluster) as outlined in the National Education Blueprint. The announcement of the first 30 cluster schools by MOE on April 8, 2007 (Sarah Chew, The Star) is a visionary step towards effective school improvement.

Cluster Schools in Malaysia has been defined as centres of excellence (within each school grouping) focusing on niche areas such as music, sports, ICT, science, language, and other discipine of studies.

To ensure that all schools in our education system are represented in the Cluster Schools of Excellence, the schools are grouped as follows:

PRIMARY SCHOOLS:

• National schools
• Chinese schools
• Tamil schools
• Orang Asli schools

SECONDARY SCHOOLS:

• Residential schools
• Technical schools
• Religious schools
• Day schools
• Putrajaya and Cyberjaya schools
• Special model schools

SPECIAL EDUCATION SCHOOLS:

POST-SECONDARY INSTITUTIONS:

• Matriculation colleges
• Teacher training institutes

INTERNATIONAL AND PRIVATE SCHOOLS:

The schools are selected based on the following criteria:

• Academic performance
• Excellence extra-curricular activities
• Effective leadership
• Effective resource management
• Effective teaching and learning
• Historical pedigree
• Conducive environment for learning and character development
• Effective implementation of ministry programmes
• Strength in specific areas such as music, sports, etc.

Each cluster school will have a particular niche area of expertise for it to excel and also to be a role model / catalyst for improvement to the other neighbouring schools.

Neighbouring schools should identify their strength or potential areas to start their ESI Model. They should take the opportunity to benchmark , adopt and adapt the Cluster School Model of their neighbouring Cluster School to implement effective school improvement in their own schools.

To magnify the casading effect of the cluster school improvement to other  schools, it is hope that more cluster schools based on different niche areas of specialization and in different categories of schools be announced by MOE in the very near future.

Read more @ :

http://www.thestar.com.my/education/story.asp?file=/2007/4/8/education/1

http://educationmalaysia.blogspot.com/search/label/cluster%20schools