What I want from the education blueprint

Let me first admit that I will be biased towards supporting the implementation of the Malaysian Higher Education Blueprint (MHEB, that is, the Blueprint) having been one of the 2,300+ survey respondents and one who wrote a very long comment directly to the administrators of the blueprint when they called out for feedback back in December 2014.

I did so as a taxpayer of this country, a Malaysian who has benefited from and underwent public education all her life, and a person who loves knowledge and learning in general.

I am also a reluctant academic, where I would very much prefer to be left to my own devices in a deep, dark dungeon of a lab somewhere – but alas, I also need to feed myself and experiments don’t come cheap, thus, I need to humbly seek grants instead of taking over the world like the evil scientist that I wanted to be.

I would like to stay true to my own promise to myself that if I want to criticise or whine about something, I must also be a part of presenting the solutions and must be able to do the hard work towards the implementation of such policies.

However, five years on this side of the fence now made me realise that my youthful ideals may not be as all rainbow, unicorns and witches as I would like it to be.

The Blueprint is timely, and I must applaud the Education Ministry for having tried to consult with all stakeholders – from students all the way up to industry and policy experts. The document is readable to laymen and I would like to encourage all parents to download at least the executive summary to have a gist of what it’s all about before we all start to dissect it based on our own experiences and need.

Achievements so far

The Blueprint laid down the hopes and aspirations of survey respondents. I will not claim that it represents what all Malaysians want.

On the surface, it looks like Malaysia is on the right, and almost accelerating track, where overall we had a ten-fold increase of enrolment into postgraduate degrees in a 10-year period, a three-fold increase in research publications in a five-year period, and quite comfortable rankings in selected fields for most of our research universities in proportion to the amount of funding we received from both government and non-governmental funding bodies.

The Blueprint then continued to outline the concerns and challenges and lists out the what, how and when these issues would be addressed.

Gaps

But (there is always a but), I would have liked to see these data:

1.  From those who enrolled, what is the percentage of students who have completed their postgraduate degrees within a 1.5-year average for master’s and four-year average for PhD degrees respectively?

What are the challenges to students completing such degrees? Does our current scholarship system work? How many of those who went for an overseas degree returned to Malaysia? Upon their return, how many work in the public and private sector respectively?

2. The Blueprint stated that it aspires to achieve 100% enrolment at all levels of structured education. What about those who are home-schooled? Further, what of Malaysians who do not have an SPM certificate?

I have friends who mentioned that these Malaysians are denied enrolment into postgraduate degree programs in our local institutions – an oxymoron as we enrol foreign students into the same programmes based on their country-of-origin’s qualifications.

3. In the Blueprint, it was also stated that the “Ministry is committed to improve the enrolment rate and completion rate of students from socio-economically disadvantaged backgrounds and communities.” How would this be carried out and would this include access to education for children of refugees and migrants as well?

What of the marginalised children themselves – the children of HIV/AIDS key-affected populations and children who use drugs, or are sexually abused – would there be a holistic education system where these children will not be stigmatised and able to receive and complete education up to at least secondary levels?

Aspirations and the way forward

While the Blueprint outlined idealistic qualities to aspire to, such as unity – I have an issue with it talking about unity and embracing diversity when the Blueprint itself did not use the term Bahasa Malaysia to represent our national language. My biggest issue with the Blueprint is it still lacks a radical change and realistic timing to achieve all these bombastic achievements we all aspire to. Further, how are we going to do all these work within five to 10 years?

Also, I think there is no need for flashy advertising campaigns and billboards to promote the Blueprint. These monies would be better spent on the implementation of the programmes proposed by the Blueprint itself.

A new acquaintance and cycling coach I made over the weekend stated the obvious to me: we just need to put everyone into one type of school. Give them tough love about mingling with each other. However, I do not think that our politicians will be jumping up and down, or make their way to parliamentary sessions, in support of this.

I applaud the focus on technical and vocational training, I think it’s high time we stop stigmatising against the different fields and of the mindset that only the “poor” students will take Arts stream and go for vocational training.

In summary, I think all of us must first and foremost change our mindsets about education and view it as a lifelong effort. We must encourage each other instead of bringing each other down to emerge the “winner”.

I think that is the hardest thing to do, and I also think that we have our work cut out for us through this Blueprint – and we must all just grit our teeth and do what we can to bring this beloved country forward. – April 22, 2015.

* This is the personal opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of The Malaysian Insider.