A DISCUSSION:

INITIATIVES OF MALAYSIAN BLUEPRINT (2013-2025)

1.0 Introduction
Malaysia dreams of establishing itself as a regional education hub. Various policies
were put in place, scrapped, reviewed and strengthened in order to upgrade the quality of
education in the country. That was how the Malaysian Education Blueprint 2013-2025 came
into effect in September 2012. It aspires to understand the current performance and
challenges of the local school system and focuses on five core objectives namely access,
quality, equity, unity and efficiency. These objectives are in tandem with the governments
move to transform the system and make it flexible enough to accept and adapt to new
challenges and expectations.
There are changes in Malaysia education system. The implementation of new
curriculum required teachers to be creative and innovative in the teaching and learning
process. In line with Malaysian Education Blueprint (2013-2015), there are initiatives that
have been adopted to achieve an effective curriculum that aim to develop pupils
intellectually, physically, socially and spiritually. The Blueprint is to ensure alignment in
priorities and actions. To that end, the initiatives which will run from 2013 to 2015 will form
part of the first wave of the Blueprint which spans the entirety of the timeframe of 2013-2025.
There are seven initiatives introduced by the government in the Malaysian Education
Blueprint (2013-2025) to enhance the Malaysian Education System. There are preschools,
literacy and numeracy screening (LINUS), high-performing schools (HPS), School
Improvement Programme (SIP) and District Transformation Programme, Principal Career
Package, Teacher Career Package and the Upskilling of English language teachers. To what
extent do the initiatives have affected the standard of education in Malaysia? In this paper,
only two initiatives will be discussed.

2.0 The Initiatives

2.1 Enhancing Pre-School
Malaysia Pre-School is a school for the education of very young children
(generally five years of age and younger). These schools seek to prepare young
children before enrolling to schools with formal education (School Malaysia, 2010).
They only provide childcare with little educational benefits. Pre-schools which focus
on education generally teach early social skills including interpersonal interaction,
being a part of a group of peers, and classroom skills such as following the
instructions of a teacher. Some formal education also takes place, such as early
reading or language skills. In Malaysia, there are two types of institutions that cater to
Pre-School. For example, the childcare centres which enrols children below four
years old and the kindergartens which admits children between the ages of four to
five years.
The enrolment of children into preschool has increased due to the initiative.
The creation of more public preschool classrooms and more grants offered to private
sector to aid them in increasing the number of preschool in Malaysia. The
government also allocated and spent more money on aiding parents financially to
pay preschool fees for their children. Besides this, the government increased funding
towards helping preschool teachers to upgrade their academic qualifications. Same
goes to the preschool teachers assistant. Many courses had given to them to ensure
the skills and ability in dealing with the children in preschools. To strengthen the
preschool system, the government created the National Preschool Information
System to facilitate and ease data collection on preschool nationwide. In order to
ensure quality, National Preschools Quality System was created by the government.
All these will go a long way in achieving the governments long term goals. It does

make sense to begin here as it is in line with the governments aim to start our
childrens academic endeavour at a younger age which is four years old.
Through this initiative, the preschools will be enhanced and the quality of
preschools will be improved by introducing minimum standards (Education, M. o.,
2011). Specifically, the initiative will see:
i.
ii.
iii.
iv.
v.

The number of classes by private and public providers increased.

Review and revise eligibility requirements for fee assistance and grants.
Harmonise pre-school teacher qualifications.
Expand fee assistance and grants for childcare.
Put in place National Early Childcare Education (ECCE) standards, as well as
professional standards for teachers.

The National Preschool Curriculum is based on the principles of Rukun Negara and
the National Philosophy of Education; and aims to develop the following skills in children:
i.
ii.
iii.
iv.
v.

Social skills.
Intellectual skills.
Physical skills.
Spiritual skills.
Aesthetic values (Creativity and Appreciation).

Basically, the children in preschool will gain early knowledge before they come to
the primary school. Importantly, they will know how to communicate with peers, teachers
and the members of the school. The early introduction to academic usually brings the
good impact to the children in their learning. The increasing of preschool in Malaysia
gives the opportunity to the children especially for the families with very low income in
sub-urban, rural and remote areas. It helps them to receive the early education provided
by the government.
Through the National Education Act 1996, preschool education was officially
declared a part of the school system. All public and private preschools are required to
implement the National Preschool Curriculum formulated through the Curriculum
Development Centre, Ministry of Education. Implementation of any additional curriculum

by private preschools requires permission from the Head of Registrar, MOE. There is no
restriction on the medium of instruction used at any registered preschool but the national
language must be taught as a subject. As suggestion to improve pupils interest of going
to school, the government should extend the period as same to primary school pupils. It
will give a motivation to pupils when seeing the seniors going back from school together
with them.
As the content of learning, we know that children have a very little attention span
to absorb the knowledge delivered by the teacher so it could be changed to the hands-on
activity that will motivate pupils to learn. Teachers have to carry out student -centered
activities. In this way, children will participate actively in the planned activities either
individually or in small group classes (Nasir, 2012). In addition, pre-school teachers
should also enrich the environment in preschool. Teachers should constantly update and
make changes to the preschool classroom environment so that children are always
interested and happy to go to preschool. In terms of formal teaching, teacher should not
give a sudden; they still need to focus on creative teaching in their early entry in
preschool. With these, pupils will feel happy to learn and become more interested in
learning.

2.2 Literacy and Numeracy 2.0 (LINUS)

The Literacy and Numeracy Screening (Linus) programme has achieved its
targets with close to 100% of Year Three students having passed the screenings in
2012. The excellent outcome of the initial Linus programme has encouraged the

Education Ministry to introduce Linus 2.0 which is the English version of the original
Bahasa Malaysia literacy programme. Linus 2.0 is part of the National Education
Blueprint which is meant to tackle the problems of English literacy among students.
Students in Year One to Three will be screened twice a year to determine if they are
progressing in English literacy at an expected pace. Those who fall behind will be
given coaching until they catch up. Linus facilitators were trained to provide support
to the teachers involved. Linus, which was introduced by the Education Ministry in
2009, is a remedial programme made to ensure pupils acquire basic literacy and
numeracy skills at the end of three years of primary education. The programme is
specified for pupils weak in reading, writing and arithmetic. The achievement of
English literacy under the program of Literacy and Numeracy Screening (Linus 2.0)
for students in the last year increased. Annual report 2014 Plans stated that
screening and intervention program of this initiative is implemented for all students in
order to strengthen the level of student mastery of the English language. Cohort 2013
showed the achievement of English literacy of 63.3 percent for the year 1 and
increase by 24 percent to 78.3 percent for the year two, in 2014. English literacy for
the year 2014 cohort recorded a share of 70.2 percent; match the accomplishments
of the previous cohort. These results indicate a significant increase in the programs
implemented.
Early literacy skills are crucial for children as these skills can help the learning
progress of children in future. Children who are left behind in acquiring early literacy
skills tend to struggle with reading and writing. As a result, these children tend to
receive less practice in reading and less exposure to content knowledge, vocabulary
and other language skills than do children who learn to read early and well.
According to this program, pupils should master the basic skills after three years of
their primary education.

Training is needed to enhance their understanding on the implementation of

the LINUS program in schools. Without the required training, the headmasters
carried out the LINUS program based on their discretion and creativity and this has
influenced the achievement of LINUS program goals. Some headmasters stated that
they understood the purpose of conducting LINUS in school, yet no additional
courses or training was provided to them before the LINUS program started (Sani &
Idris, 2013).
The development of early reading skills is extremely important in the area of
literacy. Early literacy skills have a clear and consistently strong relationship with later
conventional literacy skills, such as decoding, oral reading, fluency, reading
comprehension, writing and spelling (National Institute for Literacy, n.d.). Having a
good foundation in literacy skills will benefit childrens learning progress and will
provide them with a better future. Learners could see how they build up their
language skills and this structure map establishes a solid foundation for them in
learning third or fourth languages later on (Duibhir & Cummins, 2012). More studies
and programs are being conducted worldwide to raise awareness of early literacy
skills development. Henceforth, sound planning and strategies need to be considered
while implementing early literacy assessment as the results of assessment are useful
to be adopted in helping childrens early literacy learning and providing
vital information for educators in using the most effective instruction in the early
literacy classroom. LINUS 2.0 is a vigorous program and it would bring significant
results if executed as expected. More research should be conducted to provide
valuable suggestions to improve the quality of the LINUS 2.0 early literacy program in
Malaysia.
3.0 Conclusion

The initiatives of the Malaysian Education Blueprint (2013-2025), contain specific

focus on teaching profession including the career path, professional development strategy
and human capital development which indicate that the government is seriously concern on
the important roles of teacher in developing a good human capital for the Malaysian
economic development. The ministry believed that the quality of teachers is crucial to the
performance of the student. Discourse of teacher professional development in Malaysian
education strategic plan, therefore, demands Malaysian teacher to enhance their
professionalism for coping with uncertain future and ensuring the learning quality of the
student.