PSB wants coding lessons to be improved and enhanced in schools. File Photo
KUCHING: Parti Sarawak Bersatu (PSB) has called on the state government to enhance and improve coding lessons in every primary and secondary school in support of Chief Minister Datuk Patinggi Abang Johari Tun Openg’s digitalisation goals.
Instead of engaging in arguments over Putrajaya’s move to introduce khat or Jawi calligraphy for Year 4 pupils next year, PSB felt Sarawak should take the lead in equipping the people with coding skills and engaging more computer programming experts to help train teachers.
PSB said in a statement issued to The Borneo Post this morning that in the digital world today, computer programmes were vital in driving everything from business, marketing, science and medicine.
“With the Chief Minister vigorously embarking on delivering advanced services and digital technology, programming is essential to the end.
“Our students would have a better background for careers in whatever field they would venture into in their future career,” PSB said.
It cited a report in The Sydney Morning Herald on Aug 21, 2018, that said Australian primary schools would make coding a subject in its 2019 curriculum while those students in year 7 and 8 (equivalent to Malaysia’s Form 1 and 2) would be required to learn a coding language under new science and technology syllabuses.
“Closer to us is Thailand, whose deputy education minister Kalaya Sophonpanic just announced that many of the public primary schools would be teaching coding in the second semester of the current school year with the support from its education ministry.
“The minister also announced that the country’s Institute for the Promotion of Teaching Science and Technology (IPTST) would train some 1,000 teachers to teach coding to younger pupils and later be deployed to the country’s 30,000 schools that are ready to carry out the project,” PSB said, citing a separate news report in Thailand’s The Nation.
PSB said under the Australian proposal for schools, coding would allow young children to follow a sequence of steps in computational thinking and the ways data were represented as pictures, symbols and diagrams while older children would learn about types of data and how data could be represented in different ways using codes and symbols.
“More advanced learning will enable children to look at how different digital systems work together and able to code in a general purpose language.”
Putrajaya’s decision to introduce khat for Year 4 pupils in all schools next year was met with criticism from lawmakers and vernacular education groups.
It appears that the matter was resolved following a meeting between Deputy Education Minister Teo Nie Ching and the education groups yesterday, where the groups were reported to have relented and agreed with the move.