ELITE SCHOOL: Lau (centre) fields’ questions from reporters while deputy chairman councillor Chieng Buong Toon (fourth right) and others look on.
SIBU: Wong Nai Siong Secondary School has signed a breakthrough Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Affiliated High School of Fujian Normal University, a first-class school in China, on course to becoming an elite school.
Wong Nai Siong Secondary School is the first and only school in Malaysia to have entered an agreement with the university.
Chairman of the school’s management board Temenggong Vincent Lau Lee Ming said yesterday the strategic partnership would provide them with the expertise to further upgrade the standard of teaching and improve the quality of their academic staff.
“We see the establishment of such a relationship beneficial in elevating the quality of teaching as the school continuously strive to provide quality education to the students,” Lau told The Borneo Post after a press conference here.
Seeing the agreement signed on Sept 6 in China as a move in the right direction for the private secondary school, Lau, who was in China to witness the signing of the MoU, said more work needed to be done before the school could attain elite status.
He noted: “To transform Wong Nai Siong School into an elite school, more groundwork certainly must be done.
“We would need to put in a lot of effort in terms of improving the school’s infrastructure.
“We hope the pact will get us moving in that direction (of becoming an elite school). But it certainly needs more than that to be able to
provide top notch education to students,” added Lau.
Earlier, he told the press conference that with the signing of the MoU, SM Wong Nai Siong would become a sister school of Affiliated High School of Fujian Normal University.
He recalled that the well-known school in China was keen to strike a partnership upon learning that SM Wong Nai Siong was named after one of its founders (Wong Nai Siong).
The university felt it most meaningful to form an agreement owing to the fact it shared the same founder, he noted.
Lau said the China-based school with a student population of 2,000 was more advanced than SM Wong Nai Siong that ran only senior forms.
He believed the new partnership would benefit both teachers and students of SM Wong Nai Siong.
“Through the exchange programme, our teachers will be able to learn from their counterparts in China, thus improving their
standard of teaching,” he said.
He reckoned under the arrangement some students here would be sent to the school there to gain international exposure
and broaden their knowledge.
He described the exchange as a win-win situation as students from that school would also have an opportunity to experience the local environment and education system.
While in China, Lau also visited another school – Yuktian High School that had a student population of about 2,000.
This school, he revealed, had in the past 10 years, sent students here on an exchange programme through the Sarawak Kutien Association.
“The students were sent to SM Wong Nai Siong to enable them to be familiar with the education system, local environment and so on,” he noted.