A page extracted from the PRS website.
KUCHING: Parti Rakyat Sarawak (PRS) president Tan Sri Dr James Jemut Masing urges the state Education Department to absorb four teacher-training graduates from University Tun Abdul Razak (Unitar) to fulfil the 9:1 ratio of local teachers to those from outside the state by year 2018.
This is according to a recent 90:10 initiative by Sarawak Education Department.
Citing a page on PRS website on unemployed Unitar graduates, Masing questioned the rationale behind rejecting these potential local teachers.
“There is a list of Unitar graduates who are not employed while Sarawak is filled with teachers who want to be transferred back on the first available boat to Peninsular Malaysia. This defies logic,” Masing told The Borneo Post yesterday.
He believed that local Unitar graduates were qualified and eager to teach in Sarawak unlike those from other states.
“Reluctant and uncommitted teachers are bound to generate bad results. Therefore, I am not surprised if the Education Ministry concluded that the results of public examination of Sarawakians were not up to standard, thus not qualified to enter teacher-training colleges.”
“Bad seeds germinate into bad trees, and bad trees produce bad fruits. When Sarawakians are taught by reluctant and uncommitted teachers, of course, their results might be negatively affected. We must not allow this scenario to persist. We must put a stop to this. Enough is enough,” said Masing who is also Land Development Minister.
Unitar is a private higher learning institute offering the Bachelor of Education programme which is accredited by Malayan Qualification Agency (MQA).
Dr Mornie Kambrie, chairman of Sidma College, which houses Sarawak regional centre for Unitar, was also puzzled by the Education Department’s rejection of Unitar graduates.
“In February 2010, a memo was circulated in the Education Department stating that recruitment of teachers can only be taken from IPTA and IPG (public higher learning institutes and teacher-training colleges). Since then, our graduates have been rejected as teachers. There was no reason given except to say it was the policy.”
“Before that, we had hundreds, even up to thousands of graduates absorbed by the Education Department to teach in government schools.”
“We made a lot of noise but our graduates were rejected year after year. I made the effort to see the then deputy prime minister who was also the education minister (Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin) but nothing changed.”
Now with the 90:10 initiative, he believed Unitar could easily provide more than 200 graduates who had ‘missed the boat’ since 2010.
Fully aware that the Education Department is looking for more locals to be trained as teachers, Mornie hoped the exercise would not be “discriminatory”.
“Our students are trained 100 per cent in English and our graduates had a good track record in employment until 2010. What is ironic is that while the Education Ministry refuses to employ our graduates, other institutes such as MRSM (Maktab Rendah Sains Mara) and SMK Agama, all owned by the government, are taking them in.”
“Furthermore, our Bachelor of Education programme is designed by Prof Dato Dr Ibrahim Bajunib who is one of the three founding members of Institut Aminuddin Baki, a premier training centre for government teachers. I really can’t see the reason for rejecting our graduates.”
“So please stop the discriminatory practice. It’s not good for the people of Sarawak,” Mornie said.