The Deputy Education Minister, Datuk Khalid Yunus, yesterday gave a fourth set of figures about the number of schools in Malaysia without electricity supply.
In response to my speech on the 1997 Ministry of Education budgetary estimates, Khalid said that there 1,273 schools in Malaysia without electricity supply. Khalid has given four sets of figures on this same subject. In May, he told me that there are 1,320 schools without electricity in Malaysia. When I asked for a full list of the schools, Khalid gave me a full listing which contained only 930 schools. Last week, Khalid said in Parliament that there were more than 2,000 schools without electricity supply. Yesterday, giving the most up-to-date figures, Khalid said that there are 1,273 schools without electricity supply.
I do not blame Khalid personally for giving four different sets of figures on the number of schools without electricity in a matter of six months, as he would have to depend on input from the Education Ministry staff.
However, the fact that the Education Ministry can give four different sets of figures on the number of schools without electricity is proof that the Education Ministry is not yet serious about the importance of general computer literacy or the challenge of introducing Information Technology (IT) to all schools.
It shows that there is a vast gap between the high-sounding speeches by the Minister of Education and the Deputy Ministers about the Education Ministry’s school IT programme and providing all schools with computers by the year 2,000 and the reality on the ground - where neither the Education Minister nor his deputy ministers could state with certainty that all schools would be supplied with electricity by the year 2,000.
It is most shocking that for a country which wants to take a quantum leap in Information Technology with the RM5 billion Multi-media Super Corridor, there are 15 per cent of the schools in the country which lack the basic infrastructure of power supply which will condemn them to the position of “information-disadvantaged”.
Even if the Education Ministry succeeds in its plan to provide all schools with computers by the year 2,000, how many hundreds of schools in the country will get computers which they cannot use for lack of power supply in the year 2,000?
There is clearly a need for a greater sense of urgency in the Education Ministry with regard to the challenge of introducing Information Technology to all schools in the country, so as not to create a new divide between the “information-rich” and “information-poor” in the new Malaysian generation.
The programme announced by Khalid in Parliament yesterday about the Education Ministry programme to ensure computer literacy among teachers is also quite disappointing, for it is a mere “drop in the ocean”.
In response to my speech, Khalid said the government plans to educate 34,000 teachers on multi-media by the end of next year. He said four teachers from each primary and secondary school will be sent for training on multi-media to become “Master Trainers” in the initial stage of plans to achieve full computer literacy among the 250,000 teachers in the country by the year 2000.
The first 985 primary school teachers will undergo training in 31 training colleges from Dec. 9 to Dec. 20, the next batch of 450 will start in February. In May, 450 secondary school teachers will be given training.
Khalid said that these “master trainers” will in turn train other teachers in four subjects - mathematics, science, Bahasa Malaysia and English.
This seems to be a very haphazard way to address the problem of ensuring that the 250,000 primary and secondary school teachers gain computer literacy by the year 2,000, so that they could guide the students on IT.
However, the Education Ministry seems to think that 11-day training course is enough to produce a “Master Trainer” in IT for other teachers - which must make this couse the most “Instant IT Master Trainer” course in the world.
What the Education Ministry needs is not a haphazard IT plan for schools, both for teachers and students, but a well-conceived blueprint to introduce computer literacy to all schools.
(28/11/96)