LONE

Monday, August 16, 2004

Unwanted Free Tuition

::Tuition outside school hours is a unique activity for school going children in Malaysia and Singapore.It would be more appropriate to label tthis activity, private tuition, as the school going children are already receiving their tuition in school. But as it is so so common among our children, say tuition and everyone understands what it is. It is even commonly used as a greeting when parents meet, "Mana Ah Chong [Ahmad, James, Gopal for that matter] pergi tuisyen, pusat mana?" is often heard, this greeting is as common as "Siak Pau May" [Sudah makan? Have you eaten?]. As to how this national activity has come about, no one knows really, but the perceived idea is that tuition in schools these days are not enough and to get ahead one's children must attend private tuition classes to keep up. Is it true that the tuition in school is insufficient to pass exams? Why is this so or is it a figment of parental imagination? Are the teachers in schools slacking and withholding? As far as one knows there have not been well conducted surveys or studies regarding this national activity.

Despite the lack of these surveys and studies, the Pak Lah gomen has taken upon itself to give credence to this belief tat tuition received during normal school hours is insufficient and there is a need for private tuition outside of regular school hours. So with much ado, without any pilot study of significance, the gomen Free tuition scheme for poor primary school pupils in Standard 4, 5 & 6 was born. Apparently the gomen had identified some 500,000 poor pupils for this scheme. Some RM200 million of the taxpayers' money have been allocated for this scheme.

The PM had this to say regarding the scheme ::

“Without the aid, poor pupils will not be able to afford the additional help in these subjects.
“We know that tuition can have a positive affect on the pupils’ performance; that is why we have decided to implement this scheme,” he said after attending a briefing at the Education Ministry.
"At the same time, the project would allow government school teachers to earn extra income."

For finer details of the scheme, read this

So it was with much fanfare and much extolling of the virtues that the scheme was launched early this year. That the scheme will level the playing field for the UPSR pupils who were too poor to afford private tuition, that the scheme would encourage the mixing of pupils of thevarious races and that the gomen teachers would earn more were touted as some of the good features of the scheme.

Some few months down the road and it looks like problems are surfacing, like those cracks on the pillars of the MRR2 link. On 2rd Aug, our Edu Minister was still launching the scheme in Kota Bharu. On 14th Aug, the Nibong Tebal MP, reportedly said that only about half of primary school pupils entitled to the free tuition voucher scheme are attending tuition classes held at schools nationwide. And yesterday we are told that the Edu Ministry is going to probe the "Low Response For Tuition Vouchers Claim". So it looks like another one of those hare-brained scheme is gooing back to the drawingboard.

| ¶ 8/16/2004 10:58:00 AM

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