Lo Khere Chiang asks education autonomy to be returned to Sarawak

suppadmin | September 28, 2020

As Sarawak leaders are moving forward globally with far-sighted policies to advance Sarawakians, it is appalling that we still have educationists from the Peninsula ready to shoot down all our well-meaning plans, said Batu Kitang State Assemblyman, Lo Khere Chiang.

Chief Minister Abang Johari Openg said recently that the state government would set up international secondary schools to produce students with a good command of the English language, a move welcomed by many well meaning Sarawakians and even won praises from “The Parent Action Group for Education” (Page) and the ‘Melaka Action Group for Parents in Education” (Magpie) stating that it would enable students to compete on a global scale.

Abang Johari Openg planned for two international schools in Kuching and one each in Sibu, Bintulu and Miri with pupils from B40 families fully subsidised and those from M40 families would receive a partial subsidy while those from well to do were expected to pay a full fee.

“Thus, it is with great dismay to learn that a professor Teo Kok Seong of Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia has poured cold water on the idea by saying that education came under the purview of the federal government and allowing state-owned international schools would go against the Education Act, which requires all government schools to use Bahasa Melayu as a medium of instruction.

He goes as far as saying that our proposal is not right and there must be uniformity as far as government entities are concerned and advised us to import British teachers to have a more efficient way of improving our command of English, ” said Lo.

Expressing shock over Teo’s statement, Lo said he has always emphasized that the autonomy of education should be given back to Sarawak.

He did nit understand why professor Teo could be so narrow-minded as to stop Sarawak from setting up state owned international schools to give better learning opportunities to students in Sarawak and improve job opportunities for capable Sarawakian teachers.

“He can do whatever he wants in his own university but he should leave Sarawak government education plans and policies alone.

English is an accepted official medium after Bahasa Malaysia for the Sarawak government. It is an international language for science and technology. To advance, one has to be fluent in it to be able to compete globally. How can we compete with others if we do not have proficiency in English. Compared to now, our knowledge of English was far better than before and it is sad that there are many university graduates who cannot even string a proper sentence in English. So how are they going to find jobs? Many ended up in neighbouring countries doing blue collar jobs. Is this the education system we want for our future generations? ” he asked.

Lo pointed out that CM is foresighted enough to see that there need a change in the education system and that is the best way to move forward by having state owned international schools systems. This is not about being disloyal to the Federal government. It is all about paving a good education for our future generations.

Education policies that were made were not benefitting the rakyat. Who was the Federal Minister of Education in those years when the medium of education was changed from English to BM? Isn’t it the two same ones who cannot even decide who to pass the baton to for the PM of Malaysia? To make matters worse, the minister of education they appointed after them had a hard time deciding between black and white shoes. By the time they realised English standards need to be addressed and tried to switch from BM to English, Maths and Science to English and so on, the harm had already been done.

“Therefore, it is important that we need to get back what belongs to us. What happened to the beautiful promises two years ago to recognise Ma 63 and the return of autonomy on education and health to Sarawak? We cannot sit on our hands and wait for our education autonomy to materialise. That is why we should start with our own international schools where the syllabus is not determined by the ministry of education from Semanjung. Sarawakians are fed up with the sporadic change in education policy with every change of an education minister, ” he emphasized.

Come this election, he added, we should think carefully about voting for GPS to unite all Sarawakians under one voice and reject all Malayan based parties.