The Talk

PP VG Chandran introduced our speaker Dato Siva Subramaniam, an experienced Trade Unionist, who was to speak to us on the subject "Policies & Problems affecting the Teaching Profession". Dato Siva is a Commisoner of SUHAKAM, Advisor to CUEPACS and the Executive Secretary of NUTP. In the past, he had been a Board Member of EPF, member of the National Economic Council, and President of CUEPACS. Dato Siva had been a teacher before and was well versed to speak on the intended topic.

In starting his talk Dato Siva said that he was grateful to the Club for inviting him to speak on the topic which was dear to his heart. He then praised Rotary for doing fine community service work.

According to him, when we talk about the teaching profession we are actually talking about a lot of people being involved. Currently there are about 380,000 teachers in the country and this worked out to be about 35% of the civil service. There are about 5 million students. Due to the huge number of people there are bound to develop problems associated with people and their work. In his opinion, teachers are a committed lot, even though the problems associated with teachers are multiple and not simple. He cited the example of rural areas where teachers have to travel far to get to the schools, or where there is no water or electricity.

The Government is on the right track with its policies. It is the implementation of it that is of concern. Policies take too long to reach the teachers. He attributed that to the inefficiency of staff in the lower level. He had seen some policies taking as long as 3 years before reaching the teachers.

Another problem that he was aware of, was the problem of too much administrative work given to the teachers. He had calculated that as much as 70% of a teacher's time was used to do administrative work eg like filling forms for the various education departments, report card etc. This, according to him had actually taken the joy out of teaching. Their main role, he opined, was that of character building besides imparting knowledge.

All the various cases highlighted in the press about teachers slapping students, abusing them etc, merely showed that the teachers had tremendous stress associated with their job. It is important that this stress be removed or at least lightened.

Another feature of our education system, is the amount of red tape which he thought was impeding the development of a good system. When a policy is made by the Minister, it has to be handed down to the Director General and then to the State. From the state, it then travels to the various state departments. Outdated policies are also prevalent, according to Dato Siva.

Education is the birthright of every child. Sometimes, though this right is not available eg when a birth certificate is not available, or when a wrong name is given, or when racialism raised its ugly head, implementation of policies become a big problem in the country. He thought some of the administrators do not understand the problems being faced by the teachers and students.

The educational system or development worldwide is changing rapidly. Malaysia must buck up, as otherwise we will lose out. We are on the right track, however, when we promote English in the educational system. Thus, he thought that the debate on this subject should be closed. We should look to the interest of the children. As Malaysia is not a closed society and depends primarily on trade, we should develop the understanding of English as a language to the children.

At the end of his talk, he was duly thanked by PP Kumar who presented him with a certificate of appreciation and a memento.

26 July 2004