Fatimah (left), with Serina on her left and Rakayah her right, chairs the meeting at her office.
KUCHING:
The state Education Department will table a proposal to the Education
Ministry today on reviving the School-Based Teachers
Training (LPBS)
programme, which was discontinued in 2005.
According to Welfare,
Women and Family Development Minister Datuk Fatimah Abdullah, the
three-year course is aimed at realising the state’s target of having 90
per cent of its teaching workforce to comprise Sarawakians by 2018.
Apart
from this, LPBS will enable Sarawak to produce the numbers and at the
same time, match the teachers with the primary school subjects that they
have learned and taken command of throughout the programme.
“The
participants will each receive a teaching certificate upon completion of
the programme. Under the proposal, local (Sarawak) teachers would only
have to fill vacancies based on their teaching subjects.
“Say one
(non-Sarawakian) geography teacher is transferring out of Sarawak,
another (Sarawakian) geography teacher would have to take his or her
place. This is where it gets to be a challenging task,” Fatimah said
during a press conference at her office here yesterday.
The
minister also pointed out that the state Education Department projected a
decline in primary school teachers by 1,633 in 2018, due to transfers.
“The
most drastic would be the (projected) shortfall of 490 teachers of
Islamic Studies, 120 teachers of Physical Education, and 100 teachers
for Rehabilitation Classes.
“The only way to tackle this shortage is to have LPBS programme again in Sarawak.”
Fatimah
also disclosed that 782 primary schools teachers from Peninsular
Malaysia had applied for transfers out of the state next year. The
number, she added, was expected to increase to 1,042 transfers for 2017,
and 1,303 for 2018.
At present, there are 5,212 teachers from the peninsula serving in Sarawak.
Fatimah
said apart from LPBS, the department would also be looking at credited
teachers who had completed their course at teachers education institutes
(IPGs) nationwide and universities within the three-year period.
On
secondary school teachers, the minister viewed this sector as being
less problematic than those for primary schools. Nevertheless, she
stressed on the priority of producing quality teachers to ensure that
they would be able to produce quality students slated for the nation’s
human capital development.
The press conference was also attended
by state Education Department director Rakayah Madon, Institut Aminuddin
Baki director Serina Sauni, Sarawak Bumiputera Teachers Union president
Ahmad Malie and Sarawak Teachers Union president Jisin Nyud.
