Turning Education Into World-Class Standard Is Malaysia's Top Priority, Says M'sian Deputy PM

From Ahmad Shukran Shaharudin ABU DHABI (UAE), May 9 (Bernama) -- Improving the quality of education system and turning it into a world-class standard is the Malaysian government's top priority, and the way forward. Malaysian Deputy Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin believed that the same was true for other countries that were making every effort to move ahead in the increasingly competitive global environment. "As leaders of today, it is our utmost responsibility to ensure that our future generation are well prepared to face challenges of their time," he said in his keynote address titled 'Leading Across: How Do Effective Government Leaders Engage Across Sectors' at the Transforming Education Summit (TES) 2012, here Wednesday. Muhyiddin, who is also the Education Minister of Malaysia, said while the responsibility must be shouldered by everyone across all sectors, it was also the role of effective government leaders to engage all sectors, embrace their views and welcome them on board the national journey for education transformation. The inaugural summit was organised by the Abu Dhabi Education Council (ADEC) and it is under the patronage of the Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi, General Sheikh Mohamed Zayed Al Nahyan. The three-day summit which kicked off on Monday, will assess how to deliver relevant education in a rapidly changing global society. Former British prime minister Gordon Brown and former Finland president Tarja Halonen were also participating in the summit. Muhyiddin said transforming education in a competitive global environment required leaders of education transformation to ask the critical question of whether the education today met the demands of globalisation. "We have come to grips with the fact that the world economy is now increasingly driven by knowledge and innovation. The future economic growth and global prosperity will therefore depend on our success in making the pursuit of innovation through quality education as the prime mover of economic development," he said. Muhyiddin said this had placed developing nations, in particular, at a critical juncture in order to remain competitive with developed nations. "They (developing nations) must ensure that their education systems can produce knowledge workers who will meet the demands of knowledge and innovation-intensive industry," he added. He said transforming education was therefore not an option but a must, and indeed the success of economic transformation was contingent upon of education transformation. Furthermore, an effective government must not only drive transformation and hope to deliver results but also to make every stakeholder feel that they were part of the transformation process itself, he said. He said in that spirit, Malaysia had launched the National Education Dialogue series last week as part of the education review process, which aimed to gain public and stakeholder views about ways to improve the quality and standard of the education. In the dialogue, all walks of life in Malaysia were invited to express their views on nine specific areas which among others were teacher quality, improving school leadership competency, upgrading school quality and fostering greater parental and community involvement in education, he said. In a separate programme, Muhyiddin (second from left) visited the Al-Mushrif School, a government school that was opened in 2003 beginning with the pre-school stage (picture). The school, with an enrolment of 287 students, offered Mandarin as a third language besides Arabic and the English language as its Crown Prince was keen to know more about the Chinese culture. Muhyiddin said that for Malaysia, "We are used to dual languages in school and a study is being carried out whether we can encourage the teaching of multi languages in school." He disclosed this to Malaysian journalists after the visit. Also seen were Muhyiddin's wife Noorainee Abdul Rahman (right), Deputy Minister of International Trade and Industry Mukhriz Tun Dr Mahathir (centre), Al-Mushrif School Executive Director Mohamed Salem Al Dhaheri (left) and Al-Mushrif School's principal Jacqueline Smith (second from right). (photoBERNAMA) MALAYSIA