Furor over RM270m bill to train English teachers: KUALA LUMPUR, Oct 21 — After the uproar over McKinsey & Co’s RM20 million bill to draw up the National Education Blueprint (NEB), Putrajaya is in the spotlight again for paying three other external consultants a staggering RM270 million to help teachers here improve their English. Citing details from a recent parliamentary reply, DAP assistant national publicity secretary Zairil Khir Johari said the training programme, stretched out over three years from 2011 to 2013, was meant to train a total of 7,500 teachers from 1,800 schools nationwide at a cumulative cost of RM268.5 million or RM89.5 milion each year. The three handpicked consultant firms - British Council, Brighton Education Grpup and SMR HR Group - are each tasked to provide a total of 360 trainers or “English speaking mentors” over the three-year period, he said. The firms’ responsibilities are divided geographically, Zairil added, with the British Council slotted to provide mentors for teachers in Labuan, Sabah and Sarawak, while Brighton Education Group will train teachers in Kelantan, Terengganu, Pahang, Malacca, Johor and Negeri Sembilan and the SMR HR Group will train teachers in Penang, Perlis, Perak, Kedah and Selangor. “In other words, close to RM270 million is being spent to hire 360 English mentors. This breaks down to RM250,000 a year for each mentor, or an extravagant sum of almost RM21,000 a month,” the Bukit Bendera MP said in a statement here. “No matter what explanation MOE gives, there is no way they can justify the absurd amount of money being spent to provide what is essentially a three-years paid working-holiday to 360 native English mentors,” he said, referring to the Education Ministry by its English initials. Even worse, Zairil claimed that ground reports and feedback from teachers currently undergoing the programme revealed that the “mentoring” they receive ranges from only three to four hours a month. This casts doubt over the efficiency of the programme, the lawmaker said as he questioned how any individual could be expected to master a language or any subject with such few hours of exposure. “Furthermore, the total expenditure of RM270 million to train 7,500 teachers is equivalent to RM36,000 per teacher over three years,” he said. The same sum, Zairil pointed out, was starkly higher than what it would cost to enrol the same teacher into a properly-structured English language degree programme in a local university. For example, the DAP parliamentarian said the Wawasan Open University offers a Bachelor of Arts (Hons) in English Studies at a total cost of about RM24,000, which is two-thirds the cost of the mentoring programme currently provided by the consultancy firms. A six-month diploma course in TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages), on the other hand, would cost only RM4,500 at a local private college, he added. “While the objective of improving the quality of English-language teachers is admirable and should be pursued, there is absolutely no justification for MOE’s penchant for hiring overpaid consultants, especially when cheaper and better options are readily available,” Zairil said. Putrajaya earned flak from its critics in the opposition recently when it was revealed that foreign consultancy McKinsey & Co had been paid a staggering RM20,556,400 fee to draw up the NEB. Another DAP federal lawmaker Ong Kian Ming, when weighing in on the controversy, said the government had unnecessarily squandered taxpayers monies by hiring McKinsey & Co, pointing out that the firm’s staff are not education specialists but merely general management consultants. He said the project management office (PMO) could have asked other “high-powered” individuals from the Education Ministry and the government’s efficiency unit Pemandu to prepare the blueprint, instead of hiring external consultants. “Surely the PMO could have utilised its many capable resources within the Ministry and Pemandu to prepare this National Education Blueprint? “Why waste RM20 million on employing expensive management consultants?” the Serdang MP asked in a recent statement. He also said that this would further cast doubt on the Ministry of Education’s ability to issue a “transparent and accountable” annual report of its progress in implementing the NEB. The National Education Blueprint, which was launched by Muhyiddin on September 6 this year, is a 15-year roadmap for the country’s education system that will cover the years from 2013 to 2025. The government will take stock of the NEB’s progress at the milestone years of 2015, 2020 and 2025. One of the government’s aims in the NEB is to propel Malaysia to the top third tier in international education rankings in 15 years’ time, based on the results of the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study and the Programme for International Student Assessment. dlvr.it/49fWkZ
Posted on: Mon, 21 Oct 2013 02:14:12 +0000
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