Real reforms in education needed if Malaysia is serious about TN50
Malaysia鈥檚 sprawling and highly ambitious blueprint for 2020 to 2050, popularly known as the TN50, is touted to envision a future where its students will be in the 10th percentile worldwide in the international assessment tests PISA and TIMSS.
To get there, however, would require serious reforms to the education system, economists warn at a sobering forum on TN50 held at聽聽last Friday, joining a chorus of similar calls made by聽听补苍诲听.
鈥淓verything is built on education. We need real reforms in education, from kindergarten to university,鈥 says Lin See-Yan,聽a former banker and Harvard-educated economist.
鈥淲e need the talent, skills and technicalities of labour.鈥
In 2012, Malaysia聽聽52nd out of 76 countries for mathematics and science proficiency in the聽聽results, with scores below average in both subjects.
Malaysian 13 to 14-year-olds scored 465 and 471 for聽聽and science respectively in the聽, scoring below the international average of 500.
Lin鈥檚 presentation summarised the many economic indicators debunking the country鈥橜 high annual growth between 5.2 to 5.7 percent in 2017, as trumpeted by聽Prime Minister Najib Razak and his government. These include the falling value of the ringgit, the over-reliance on cheap foreign labour and high youth unemployment.
In Lin鈥檚 list of necessary 鈥渟tructural reforms鈥, he had suggested the need to聽have more talent and innovation in the workforce.
There is, however, no 鈥渟ilver bullet鈥 towards achieving the future envisioned by TN50, according to moderator Professor Woo Wing Thye Woo, President of the Jeffrey Cheah Institute.
Criticising Johan Merican鈥檚 鈥 the head of TN50鈥檚 Special Unit 鈥 keynote speech for lacking a clear mechanism to translate the goals into the reality, Woo offered his suggestion on how Malaysia can achieve the ambitious goals in TN50, which Merican had described as Malaysia鈥檚 鈥渕oonshot鈥.
鈥淗ow do you get to the moon? You鈥檙e not going to get there in a sailboat. You need the right vehicle and for it to work, the 鈥榟ardware鈥 and 鈥榮oftware鈥 must be okay,鈥 says Woo, who is also a Professor of Economics at the聽
鈥淭he engine of growth has to be a private sector working together with the government not to achieve full capacity, but to achieve efficiency.鈥
鈥淪oftware鈥 refers to the governance system, that is, free and fair elections, an independent judiciary and a free press.
Source:聽Study International News
This article first appeared in聽Study International News聽on聽January 15, 2018.
