Duncan’s journal
Our meeting in the morning with the Acting Australian High Commissioner to Malaysia, Mr Craig Chittick, allowed us to explore new issues relating to the tertiary links between Australian and Malaysian education. We were made aware of the practical significance of the international student market for the Australian economy – education is Australia’s third largest export behind coal and iron ore. The discussion of Australia’s popularity as a study destination prompted debate about whether recent racially-motivated violence has deterred the intake of overseas students. Whilst it was put forth that this is one aspect pertaining to a recent 20% decline in international students, Mr Chittick convincingly argued that the reasons for this situation are multidimensional and certainly not limited to fear of criminal behaviour. I look forward to exploring what these other dimensions might be – perhaps by looking at the poor recognition of Australian degrees in Malaysia and the recent closure of several colleges for international students. Perhaps the overall educational security that was once attractive to foreign students is now lacking in Australia.
Mr Chittick also made clear to us the potential benefits of ongoing negotiations for a Free Trade Agreement. An FTA could secure the increased presence of Australian businesses such as law firms in Malaysia and thereby promote an improved recognition of Australian university degrees so as to allow Australian graduates to take up positions in these businesses. I’m really interested in the development of this FTA and eagerly await the terms of a final accord hopefully within the next year.
We followed up issues relating to Malaysian secondary school education in an interview with the Deputy Director-General (Education Operations) of the Ministry of Education, Dato’ Hajah Noor Rezan Bt. Bapoo Hashim. She is an extremely passionate advocate of equal educational opportunities and kindly acknowledged many of our recent findings. Of particular note was her explanation of the abolition of PPSMI. She made it clear that the Ministry had considered a case-by-case phasing-out of English-taught science and maths curricula instead of a blanket ban, but chose the latter in fear of exacerbating an already worrying urban/rural educational divide. Whilst most urban schools seem more than capable of delivering classes in English, rural institutions struggle to meet their required performance levels. The abolishment of PPSMI seems to be more of a response to a severe educational gap, rather than an indictment of English as an improper language for the teaching of sciences and maths. This insight was crucial to our understanding of the current government stance, and we all look forward to exploring this new issue in other policies. We hope to develop a focus on the rural/urban divide and the gender/ethnic imbalance in Malaysian education as new themes in our discussions.
Emily’s journal
It was so nice to talk with Craig Chittick, the Acting High Commissioner today. He really shared our outlook on this whole experience; “Australians and Malaysians share the same sense of humour”. This simple foundation is strong enough to relate to new people and gain an understanding of them. As we become more immersed in our mission, I am noticing more of an easy flow in the way of conversation between us, (kids who were naïve to these issues up until recently) and the officials, as we genuinely want to learn, and they, to inform us of the obstacles that are so different to our own. Mr Craig Chittick emphasised that “Personal relationships are all important” in relation to ties between Australia and all of Malaysia, particularly in rebuilding the trust broken by the recent violent attacks on Indian youth in Melbourne. Mr. Chittick said that the best way for people of all races based in Malaysia to defy the reputation-destroying media allegations is to come to Melbourne (or anywhere in Australia) and experience for themselves the great education, job opportunities and safety that we generally enjoy.
We had another opportunity to listen to a different perspective when we interviewed Noor Rezan, the Deputy Director General of Education today, who informed us of the types of schools in Malaysia before answering our questions. The most interesting response came from the PPSMI issue; Noor Rezan said that although maths and science taught in English suited the majority of urban students, the change to teaching in Bahasa had to be implemented across the board so as not to widen the gap between urban and rural schools, where most of the students requiring the change came from. Noor Rezan also said that more school- based exams were needed. For the purpose of marking a student on class participation and interpersonal learning, this is useful, but schools need each other as a base of comparison and structure. I think a change to school-based exams would only be detrimental to the motivation that students get from competing on an interschool level. Of course, exams should be more about striving to achieve a personal standard of top performance, but students will always influence one another, and I don’t think this is a bad thing.
Sunshine’s journal
It's getting rather late right now and we have an early start tomorrow, so I'm just going to go straight into it and reflect solely on the interviews we had today. We started off with a trip to the Australian High Commission, where we spoke to the Acting High Commissioner, Mr. Craig Chittick. I've realised that my brain doesn't work properly in the morning, so Steve helped me by running through the various topics we could discuss. Mr. Chittick is a very jovial, nice and smiley man. It was remarkable how our conversation had a really nice flow to it as opposed to some other interviews we have had already. The question I asked him was on the subject of the recent racial attacks on Indian students and how it would affect tertiary education (which brings in the 3rd most amount of money economically to the country) in Australia. He raised several facts that showed that particular sector of economy would suffer a bit of a loss, and now especially when the world is so competitive other countries like Singapore and Hong Kong would seem like a safer option for Indian students. I was keen to ask more questions along the lines of how these incidents would affect the Indian community from Malaysia, but because time was so pressing, we headed straight into photo taking and then we left the High Commission and moved on to our second interview in Putrajaya.
At Putrajaya we were greeted warmly by Dato' Noor Rezan Bt. Bapoo Hashim, the Deputy Director General of Education Malaysia. She was very welcoming and spoke proficiently about the topics we were looking into. She helped me a lot in terms of understanding the background and factors that caused certain changes in our education system. What also enlightened me was her willingness to admit and acknowledge the faults of our current education system and several ways the government intend to correct these issues. When naming the issues that appealed to me during our discussion with her, I think my interests lay in the racial quotas that the government sets in the Education system primarily in fully residential schools. Another thing was also the state of teacher's in schools today and their roles in educating the future generation.
After our interview we went on a short tour around Putrajaya and then back to Rainforest to wrap up questions for Prof. Robin Pollard and the DPM. I have to say, we made some lovely inroads in completing most(if not all) of our work today, plus we had a delicious Arabic dinner! Looking forward to Melaka 'esok'.
Farhan’s journal
I’ll recount our day starting from the very first half. Our meeting in the morning with the Acting High Commissioner, Craig Chittick was exceptionally interesting as it was made reasonably informal. The meeting or should I say chit-chat took place at the Australian High Commission so while enjoying the refreshments provided we discussed some of the issues we have been focusing on with Mr Craig Chittick. He happened to be a senior career officer at the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trades (DFAT) and was an expert in Australia and Malaysia relations. He pointed out that education in Australia is the 3rd largest export behind coal and iron ore. Education is massive in Australia. Speaking of which, there had been an issue recently relating to the Indian students in Australia being in a spate of violence and following on that issue, there has been a decrease in the number of Indian students who study in Australia. Mr Chitticks comment was very simple and I personally thought it was the way to go. The fact that nothing in the world is perfect and nothing can never be as ideal as it could be. Security measures have been taken and in fact all measures were being taken out to compensate the loss and Australia is endeavoring to regain the trust of Indian students. Plus, the focus shouldn’t just be on Indian students as many other countries play important parts in contributing the Education in Australia hence making it the 3rd largest export. In fact, statistics have shown that Australia seems to be a favored choice for tertiary education especially by the Malaysian students ourselves as much as 20, 000 Malaysian students study in Australia per year. But I looking at the other flip of the coin, how many Australian’s do actually pursue their tertiary education in Malaysia? Don’t the Universities in Malaysia has something to attract more foreign and international students, especially from Australia? Nonetheless, I personally feel that Craig Chittick was a very friendly and down-to-earth person and having the opportunity to speak and share some ideas with him was definitely an honour.
Another interview awaits us at the Ministry of Education with the Deputy-Director General of Education, Dato’ Hajah Noor Rezan bt. Bapoo Hashim. She definitely was a very friendly and passionate educationist, judging by the way she spoke and the brilliant ideas she expressed during the meeting. What I personally like about her is that she doesn’t only speak of education as a concerned politician but also as an experienced teacher and most importantly, as a mother who wants their children to have the best education possible. The very fact that she seems to acknowledge certain issues that had arisen and is trying her best consenting for the best solution and is yet to be confirmed by the Education minister. There were lots of issues that had been discussed and one of them was on the issue of exams being too exam oriented. She couldn’t agree more with us and started explaining on the right methodology the teachers are supposed to have and the mindsets of both the teachers and students themselves which somehow lead to a proposal of putting less weight age on the UPSR and PMR public examinations so that students don’t actually learn just to pass their exams and worse, learning how to answer questions, not learning how to live. She was saying how we could actually move towards a direction of assessing these schools in a school-based assessment kind of manner for example consistent evaluations of topics learnt i.e concepts. That would bring much more significant than it does by just having national assessments. That was what I thought was most interesting despite a variety of issues discussed. I think it is accurate to say, Dato Hajah Noor Rezan Bapoo is not only a good politician that considers the emotions and feelings of the younger generation, but most importantly a mother who knows how to educate her children in the best form of manner. Her passion and enthusiasm towards education is what inspires me make it a worthwhile learning journey as well as being much like her.
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Learning Journey- 5th April