Shortage Of Teachers In Sarawak - The Not So Good Agenda Of The Malaya Driven Ministry Of Education
The Sarawak Teachers’ Union (STU) has called on the state government to urgently review its 90 per cent Sarawakians policy for teachers.
According to STU president Adam Prakash Abdullah, the policy has resulted in a shortage of 3,000 teachers, which is burdening the education sector in Sarawak.
https://www.theborneopost.com/2021/05/06/union-calls-for-review-of-90-pct-sarawakians-policy-for-teachers-in-the-state/
The issue of the shortage of teachers for public schools in Sarawak and the ratio of Sarawak-born teachers versus teachers from Malaya has dogged Sarawak since at least 2010. These are issues that, for over the last 11 years at least, no federal Minister of Education had shown any motivation to solve.
As part of the background to this article, it is pertinent to know that in the history of Malaysia’s ministry of education there had been 23 ministers of education so far, starting with Abdul Razak Hussein. Out the 23 ministers of education that we have had until today, only 2 are from Sarawak - Abdul Rahman Ya’kub ( from 1969 - 1970) and Sulaiman Daud (July 1981 - July 1984). The other 21 are all Malayan.
Of the 23 ministers of education that have served Malaysia, 6 went on to become prime minister (PM) of Malaysia. Every single one of them, including the 6 that went on to become PM, were fully acquainted with the problems but none demonstrated any particular motivation to solve the problem. Sarawak was not in their backyard.
From the time the problem of shortage of teachers in Sarawak became public sometimes in 2010, there had been 5 ministers of education, among them the current prime minister of Malaysia, Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minister_of_Education_(Malaysia)
Rural Schools Affected The Most
When the problem first caught our attention in 2010, among the issues highlighted were challenges faced by teachers serving in rural schools and the strangely low intake of Sarawkians into the teachers’ training colleges. These days they are called Institut Pendidikan Guru (IPG).
It was said that there was (and reportedly still is) a general reluctance among teachers to serve in rural based schools, particularly schools with decent road access to it, without 24 hrs electricity supply and without clean water supply. For muslim teachers, the absence of places of worship and difficulty in sourcing halal food were also cited. Teachers transferred from Malaya were well known for their reluctance to serve in rural Sarawak and this manifested in the large number of requests to be transferred out from rural schools.
https://www.theborneopost.com/2010/01/03/teachers%E2%80%99-woes-in-rural-sarawak/
What is seldom discussed was the impact of these unresolved issues on rural households, the majority of which are B40 (now rightly B60) who looked upon education as their ticket out of poverty. Until today, the education which their children received never did become the game changer they had hoped for.
Convergence Of Challenges
Shortage of teachers experienced by rural schools was in fact a manifestation of the combined effects of many other issues. At the risk of being accused of repeating myself I will name as contributing factors the lack of decent access roads to rural schools, absence of 24 hrs electricity and reliable clean water supply, no health facilities nearby, difficulty in getting halal food for muslim teachers, dilapidated classroom blocks and living quarters.
To be fair, these are daunting challenges but we are looking at a period that dates back to as far as Sept 1963, a period of more than half a century.
The 90 : 10 Ratio.
In Oct 2015, several mainstream and online news portals reported that a bunch of teaching graduates from UNITAR had approached Sarawak’s Land Minister Tan Sri James Masing (TSJM), to enlist his help to get them employed as teachers.
https://www.theborneopost.com/2015/10/09/accept-unitar-graduates-for-training-to-achieve-91-ratio/
Sometime later it was reported that many of these graduates, despite intervention of TSJM, failed to get employment because they failed the psychometric tests to which they were subjected to.
In the same month, CM Datuk Patinggi Adenan Satem, recognising the need for an urgent measure to mitigate the adverse effects of the shortage on the rural communities, directed that by 2018 the ratio of transfer to schools in Sarawak, particularly rural schools be at 90% : 10%, the later being the ratio for teachers from Malaya.
https://www.theborneopost.com/2015/10/08/90-pct-local-teachers-by-year-2018/
Five months earlier, then minister for education Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin proposed that all all graduates of teaching institutions be subjected to psychometric tests before they are absorbed as teachers.
https://www.nst.com.my/news/2015/09/muhyiddin-calls-psychometric-test-would-be-teachers
Effectively, what the then minister of education did was to placed additional hurdles in the effort to resolve the problem of shortage of teachers and the dilapidating effects it had on the rural communities in Sarawak.
Why was Sarawak allowed to be left so far behind Malaya when the enviable progress made in the education sector in Malaya was fueled by oil money sucked from Sarawak’s territory? Why did the Sarawak BN government (now rebranded as GPS), despite being part of the federal government all along except for a brief period of 22 months when Pakatan Harapan (PH) helmed the federal government, failed to stop the injustice dealt to Sarawak by these Malayan leaders?
How It Should Have Been
A sharp focus by both the Sarawak government and the federal government on resolving the issues of rural road connectivity, 24 hrs supply of electricity and clean water, safe schools and living quarters for teachers was definitely one way of making it easier to get teachers to serve in rural schools.
The federal government, which was sucking up Sarawak’s oil should have had the moral obligation to give Sarawak a much bigger share than the 5% royalty that it gave to Sarawak since the implemention of the Petroleum Developmeny Act ‘7. At this point, it is pertinent to mention here that the 5% royalty was in fact proposed by a Sarawakian politician who later became the Chief Minister of Sarawak - Abdul Rahman Ya’kub.
https://www.dailyexpress.com.my/news/152676/5pc-payment-was-s-wak-s-idea-says-razaleigh/
The corrupt practices aside, much could have been done to improve rural road connectivity, providing 24 hrs supply of electricity and clean water, setting up of rural health clinics, keeping schools facilities in safe and habitable state and other things that would have made rural postings more bearable. Sadly, even until today very little had been achieved.
The other course of action that could have had the effect of minimising the problem of shortage of teachers was to enrol more Sarawakians, particularly Sarawakians originating from rural communities into the teachers training institutes or the IPGs. But for reasons best known to the successive ministers of education and to the powers that be in Sarawak, these options was not considered. The intake of Sarawakians into the IPGs was always stated as very low and the reason always used were few Sarawakians were qualified to enter the IPGs to be trained as teachers. One factor which was cited was the inability of Sarawakians candidate to pass the psychometric tests, a test recommended by PM Muhyiddin when he was the education minister.
In 2016, to compound to the problems, then PM Najib Razak in his 2017 budget, proposed to close down 11 IPGs nationwide, including 3 in Sarawak. Fortunately, after much protests and petition, the MOE backed down.
https://www.theborneopost.com/2018/05/24/alan-ph-sarawak-disagrees-with-closing-of-ipg-campuses/
In the final analysis, what causes the problem with the shortage of teachers can be safely narrowed down to the lackadaisical attitude of the Malaya driven federal government and compounded by local Sarawak government leaders paying lip service to the education sector in Sarawak.
By keeping Sarawak bogged down in this problem, great employment opportunities are being opened up to Malayan. That is the logical effect of forcing Sarawak to reconsider the 90 : 10 ration, the narrowing of opportunities for Sarawakians. At the same time, Sarawakians are being conditioned to believe that they are not good enough to be teachers.
Where Do We Go From Here?
In just one sentence, we need a government and leaders who constantly have the well-being of Sarawakians at heart and who are not averse to prioritising the impoverished rural communities.
