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First time baking cookies and the kids help…. not bad the result.

Quality Of Pre-school Teachers In Malaysia

Pre-schools are blooming everywhere at each corner of the housing area in Malaysia. Sometimes at one housing area, there are as many as 5 pre-schools all near by to each other just a block away or next to each other. Simply because there is a demand and the business is lucrative.

With the booming of these pre-schoolsdoesn’t mean that their teachers are all qualify in early childhood education. In Australia, to be a pre-school teacher, one needs a 4 years bachelor degree with Hon. But its a sad and petetite case in Malaysia, resources are hard to get. Though the early education is a lucrative business but the teachers are not highly paid. It’s just not any glam job that attracts young people to venture in. The demand of teachers is always higher than supply and hence almost every tom dick and harry can apply a job to be a pre-school teacher as long as they posses a SPM (equvailent to O-level) cert.

Flip through to the classification site of the newspaper , especially Chinese newspaper, almost all year round , there is advertisement on vacancy for pre-school teachers. The overturn of teacher in each pre-school is high. No doubt there are genuine qualified pre-school teachers that hold at least a diploma in early childhood education or up till master degree but these teachers are very rare and hard to get by.

What make up of all these vacancy then? Housewife that they kids had grown and they fill that they need to have job to pass time and are usually in their 40s to 50s that has been lost touch with working culture for many years and some might not even speak accurate mandarin and english.  Their true interest often might not be of the passion with working with kids, but a job that give some pocket money and kill time. They think what they know is enough and barely had the open mind to accept new teaching method and change and more often do not have the passion to do the job wholeheartely. They often think that teaching pre-school for 1/2 day is the most easy and relaxing job.

Another group of people that fills in the vacancy is students that are waiting for their public exam results (O-level or A-level) Very fresh school leavers without knowledge in child development and once their result is out and being accepted into higher learning instituition, they will leave their teaching job. These group of people again treat pre-school teaching job as a pass time activitity and a part time job that brings in income while they waiting for their results.  Some of these students are even given job as class teacher instead of assistant teacher. (No doubt they could have the love for kids in order to choose this feel , but they are lack of the understanding in early childhood education and child development in order to help the child to develop)

What happen to the poor children that has developed trust and accustomed to the teacher when the teacher decided to leave after they get offer in higher learning institution? The child have to go through the whole process of getting adapt to a new teacher where the new teacher basically knew nothing about them and it takes time to build the trust with the child.

Another group of people that fills in the vacancy is uni grad that treat pre-school teaching job as stepping stone. They say “sayonara” to the school once they found a better highly paid job in another field.

Non of these three categories are expert or even have a very basic knowledge of child developmentbut yet they are given such important job to bring up the next generation of our country. How many of these pre-school teachers have actually heard about John Dewey, Erik Erikson, Jean Piaget, Vygotsky, Plato or Rousseau, Froebel and even bothered to find out. And not many pre-school teachers are motivated enough to read up books on child development and child psychology. (Reading is not a habit of most Malaysian) and certainly not many pre-school teachers are motivated to go for any courses or seminars during the school holidays…even going back to in-house training also many teachers complaint.  They treat teacher as a job and most do not do it with passion.

Early childhood education is as important as university education. We are bringing up the future leaders in our country and it starts from young.  If university’s need a professor qualification to lecture, the pre-school as well need better quality teachers. Teachers that which are not only having a love for children, but also have the basic foundation in carrying out the job and have understanding in child development.

Waiting for a day that our education ministry will impose a standard on pre-school teacher’s qualification. It’s still a long way to go to be in par with developed countries like Australia.

Each time I go for a school hunt, I asked about the teacher’s qualification, preferably a cert shown to me and also the turn over rate of the teacher. The management or principle have to be good enough to retain and motivate it resource, if the teachers are motivated, they will be more dedicate to their job. It’s off parent’s own discreetion when come to choosing a pre-school for their kids and also to look into the teacher’s qualification.