STU urges ministry to help upgrade teachers

0

Jisin Nyud

KUCHING: Sarawak Teachers Union (STU) is appealing to the federal Education Ministry to upgrade teachers in the state, including temporary teachers.

Its president Jisin Nyud said the upskilling of teachers is needed to meet the shortage of quality teachers especially those specialising in teaching certain subjects.

Responding to a recent statement by state Education, Science and Technological Research Minister Dato Sri Michael Manyin, he said he believed Manyin intended to say Sarawak needs more quality teachers when he touched on the target to achieve 90:10 ratio of local teachers in the state by next year.

“The 90:10 ratio is good policy because it serves as our target. If we can produce more excellent students who can join the teaching profession, that will be very good. However, bringing in excellent students to join the teaching profession is not easy because those excellent students would rather become doctors, engineers, lawyers or take up other professions.

“No doubt there are students with excellent results who are not accepted for the training in the teaching institutions and universities due to some criteria they don’t fulfill. Anyway, we need to have teachers who are passionate and committed in teaching. We also need teachers who really put their heart and soul in their profession, not those at the end of the month (only interested to) take their pay check.” he said yesterday.

Jisin said he received a lot of messages regarding the dissatisfaction of teachers and the public on Manyin’s comment about the quality of teachers in Sarawak.

“Anyway, it was not his intention to say that ‘Sarawak has no quality teachers’. It should be ‘Sarawak needs more quality teachers’. So, whatever the comment is in the newspaper or media, we just look at the comment from a positive perspective and we need to keep ourselves cool and calm because there will be issues like this.

“When we talk about teacher quality, it really matters. That is why STU insists that the intake of trainee teachers into the IPGM (teachers training institutes) or IPTA (private higher learning institutes) should take into consideration the quality of students’ academic performance,” he said.

Manyin was recently quoted as saying priority must be given to providing quality education to children, more so in the rural areas so that they will have good learning environment similar to what urban students have.

For this reason, Manyin explained the government would not compromise on the quality of teachers.