Why Jiao Zong rejects ranking of Smart Schools

I was slightly irritated when I read in the Star yesterday that "Jiao Zong (United Chinese School Teachers Association of Malaysia) chairman Ong Chiow Chuen was quoted in the Sin Chew Daily as saying that the move would have a negative effect." This 'move' is in reference to the decision by the Ministry of Education (MOE) to implement a 5 star rating system for smart schools. I am fully supportive of moves by the MOE to release more information to the public at large which I think will create more transparency and accountability on the part of the school administrators as well as the Ministry. But why did Jiao Zong's chairman reject this ranking system?

First of all, I'm not even sure if there are any Chinese medium schools in the smart school project. A cursory examination of the list of smart schools show that these are all secondary schools and none of them could be considered, as far as I can tell, 'Chinese' national secondary schools in the sense that Catholic High in PJ is a 'Chinese' national secondary school i.e. most of the students are Chinese students from SRJK(C) primary schools and who take Chinese as a PMR as well as an SPM subject. So, I'm a little bit puzzled as to why Ong would object to the ranking of smart schools.

Secondly, his logic of rejecting the ranking of smart schools fails me. He said: "It would give the public a clear picture on how good or bad a school was and this would prompt parents to use all means to ensure that their children were placed in schools that are highly rated."

Given the fact that smart schools already receive greater funding and attention from the Ministry, wouldn't the demand to go to these schools already be sufficiently high? Also, aren't there current procedures which allocate students based on where they live which precludes the sudden streaming in of a large number of outside students who want to enroll in the best smart schools? Furthermore, aren't there other good schools out there which are not designated as smart schools?

As I'm from PJ, I'll use some PJ examples. I can't imagine that all parents would suddenly want to send their girls to Sri Aman since it is a smart school and it would probably do quite well in the ranking system given the demographic profile of the students who go there as well as their middle class and well educated parents. This is because there are other good schools in PJ such as Assunta and Catholic High.

I have to admit that I haven't read the full Oriental Daily interview with Ong. (If anyone knows of the link, please post it here and I'll read the full interview) So I might be guilty of not fairly judging his statements.

But this I will say and I say this based on a more general impression of Dong Jiao Zhong (Dong Zhong and Jiao Zhong) as organizations - that they are not keen on education reform and that they are not keen on being transparent internally and the basis of this attitude is that these organizations are governed and run by aging men who are conservative by nature. Anything that smacks of change is an affront to the way they like things to be - which is to preserve the status quo and not to have change.

While Dong Jiao Zhong has done a great deal in regards to protecting and raising awareness of the plight of Chinese schools in Malaysia, it has done less well in reforming the state of Chinese education in Malaysia. I will just point to two specific examples. They have failed to address the poor standard of English that is being taught and learned in Chinese primary schools as well as Chinese independent schools. So much so that they could not provide alternative proposals when the Ministry of Education decided to implement the teaching of Science and Math in English across all primary schools including Chinese primary schools. The second example is one which Tony has blogged about before - which is the issue of corruption among headmasters in Chinese schools.

The rejection of ranking schools is symptomatic of the conservative streak within Dong Jiao Zhong, I argue. If this leads to a ranking of Chinese primary schools, for example, it will reveal the myth that all Chinese primary schools are equally good at teaching Science and Math, for example, and perhaps reveal the poor standard of English among students in these schools as well as some of their teachers.

While having school rankings is not a panacea for the state of education in Malaysia, I regard it as a positive and progressive step. The fact that the chairman of Jiao Zhong has rejected this move further cements my impression that Dong Jiao Zhong is reluctant to reform itself and to take progressive steps to improve the state of education among Chinese primary schools as well as independent Chinese secondary schools.