Teachers’ woes in rural Sarawak

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THE start of a new year also signals the beginning of a new school year, involving numerous parents, school age children, and teachers throughout the length and breadth of Sarawak.

Riding on this routine and seemingly innocuous event is the education of our future Sarawakians, the opening of our young minds to the world of knowledge and literacy, and the development of our local human resource.

Education is also the most effective means of lifting poor Sarawakians out of poverty, and provides them with a ladder for upward social mobility.  Parents – especially rural parents living in the remote interior – must be encouraged by their community leaders to keep their children in school by all means possible, to ensure abright future for their children.

Once again, the beginning of another school year will showcase the stark reality of the great disparity between urban and rural schools, in terms of school buildings and other physical amenities, the strength and quality of the teaching staff, and teaching aids like computers and lab equipment.

Generally, most teachers – especially women – prefer to teach in urban schools, so they can have a normal life with their families. Rural postings are therefore left to single teachers.

Teaching and living in an isolated rural Sarawak school for single new teachers – especially for those who come from other states – must be a supremely challenging task. There would also be the initial culture shock to contend with.

While the natural beauty of rural Sarawak is breathtaking, these lonely teachers will have to cope with the daily problem of missing the creature comforts that urban teachers can take for granted. When they have to struggle with the simple task of transportation and communication with the outside world, it is hard for them to stay focused on teaching and remain motivated for long periods of time.

The work is made harder for these teachers because their rural students may not have the same parental encouragement and guidance as their urban counterparts.

A rural posting is indeed the severest test of the dedication and sense of commitment for any teacher in Sarawak. We can only speculate how many teachers have just abandoned their post and fled midway through a school year. The Education Ministry should really go out of its way to look after the welfare of these teachers and pay them special hardship and transfer allowances if necessary.
The beginning of a new school year also sees the dire shortage of teachers serving in Sarawak.

State Education Department director Datuk Dr Julaihi Bujang recently said that 1,347 and 840 teachers will be needed in our secondary and primary schools respectively when the new school year commences.

Apparently, the notorious hardship of teaching in rural Sarawak has something to do with this shortage of teachers to fill in teaching vacancies in our schools. This is a perennial educational problem in the Land of the Hornbills, and the victims will be our rural children in Sarawak.

The obvious solution is to launch a recruitment drive for more Sarawak youths to be trained and qualified as teachers in our teacher-training colleges. When they graduate, they would just be posted to their own community to teach their kids, without this culture shock experienced by West Malaysian teachers.

But for some strange reason, the intake of Sarawakians into our two teacher-training colleges has always been low. Last year, of the 6,267 applicants who applied for admission into those colleges, only 152 applicants from Sarawak were successful.

We all know the Ministry of Education is a huge bureaucracy, and so decision-making and policy implementation involve many layers of officialdom down the chain of command. However, the shortage of teachers in the rural schools of Sarawak is such a long-standing problem that it will require the ministry to be bold, proactive and innovative, to recruit more Sarawakians into the teaching profession.

Sarawak – like Sabah – is a vast state with a thinly scattered population, and so presents many unique problems in socioeconomic development.  This huge challenge in building, equipping and staffing our rural schools is such a monumental unique problem. If more allocation is needed to fund the programmes of the Department of Education for the cause of improving rural education in Sarawak, then the federal coffers ought to open up for this purpose.

The recruitment and training of new teachers should also focus on building the right aptitude among the trainees. Teaching is not just a profession for making a living and a career; it should also be a noble and sacred vocation. Entrusted into the hands of the teachers at all levels of

our educational institutions are the minds, souls, and the futures of our children.

Trainee teachers should be constantly reminded that a good teacher is like a candle – it consumes itself to light the way for others. But first, their trainers should set an example for the trainees.