KOTA KINABALU: Local graduates with relevant qualifications who are interested in becoming a teacher are invited to register themselves with the education department.
State Education director, Datuk Jame Alip, said special registration counters have been opened at Wisma Pendidikan in Kota Kinabalu starting yesterday and similar counters will be opened at all district education offices across Sabah today.
The counters will be opened until Friday, to record educational background and personal details of qualified graduates, as part of the department’s effort to achieve the target to have 90 percent of the teachers in Sabah to be from among the locals.
“We have set a target of achieving the 90:10 ratio or 90 per cent of the teaching posts to be filled by the locals in three years, and this is part of our effort to achieve that target,” he told reporters after officiating a programme called Initiative 90:10 here, yesterday.
Jame said the registration for now would strictly be for graduates in education or teaching programmes, adding that the high unemployment rate among graduates in Sabah may result in those with unrelated qualifications trying to register themselves.
However, he said, the department will consider opening the opportunity to graduates with other qualifications if the number of those registered is not enough to meet the 90 per cent target.
“Should the need to open the registration to graduates from other fields arise, those with non-related qualification who are selected will be required to undergo a one year training before they can be absorbed as teachers,” he said.
Jame said more than 2,284 peninsula teachers who are presently based in Sabah have applied for transfer to their home states as at Oct 1.
Of the number, more than 1,000 would leave Sabah by next year, and hopefully the vacancies could be filled by local graduates who are currently jobless.
“Comparably, only 394 Sabah teachers who are based in the peninsula have applied to return,” he told reporters.
He said there are currently 26,425 primary school teachers in Sabah, out of which 4,539 are from Peninsular Malaysia, 654 from Sarawak, 31 from Federal Territory Labuan and 21,200 or 80.2 per cent local Sabahans.
As for secondary school teachers, he said, out of 14,651 serving in Sabah, about 72.1 per cent or 10,560 are from the State, 3,760 from Semenanjung and 20 from Labuan.
He also noted that 1,104 primary school teachers in Sabah have applied to be transferred back to their respective states next year and only 273 teachers from Sabah, currently serving outside the State, have applied to be transferred home.
Additionally, 1,180 secondary teachers have applied to be transferred out from Sabah and only 121 have applied to return to the State next year.
“This means that we need more than a thousand teachers to teach at our primary schools and over 800 to replace those in secondary schools that wanted to be transfered out,” he said.
Jame also expressed concern over the mismatch between the teachers available with the teachers needed to teach certain subjects.
He said subject such as Pendidikan Islam is in critical need of more teachers but there were very limited numbers of teachers with the right qualification for the subject.
“We have 11 Islamic religious schools in Sabah, but there not many ustaz or ustazah among our teachers. This has forced us to take teachers from other states.
“We also need more than 200 teachers for Science at primary schools, as well as a great number of teachers for counselling,” he said.