The Deputy Prime Minister and Education Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin should be the most excited man in the country, as he should be conscious more than anyone else that the new school year of 2014 is the most special, historic and even unique in the nation’s 56-year history.
This is because entering school this year will be Malaysia’s first batch of “miracle students” who would rank among the top-third of world students in international educational benchmarks for critical subjects, whether TIMSS (Trends in International Maths and Science Study) or PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment), at the beginning of the next decade.
That is IF the Malaysia Education Blueprint 2013-2025 (MEB) launched by Muhyiddin in September last year is to achieve its objective, that by 2021-2025 or Wave 3 of the National Education Transformations under the MEB, the performance of Malaysian students in international education assessments like TIMSS and PISA would be in the “top third” of the systems.
The opening of the 2014 school year for 449,067 Year One pupils nationwide, which began yesterday for Johore, Kedah, Terengganu and Kelantan and today for other states, should therefore be specially exciting and challenging for Muhyiddin, if he is really expecting the present batch of Year One pupils to perform an “educational miracle” to double leap-frog from the present bottom-third to top-third of world educational assessments like PISA and TIMSS in a decade.
In fact, not only the eyes of the country but the eyes of the world should be focussed on the present batch of 449,067 Year One pupils to ascertain whether and how they could do what no other country or batch of students had ever done or attained, i.e. to achieve a triple “hop-step-jump” from the bottom-third to the top-third of international educational benchmarks in a decade. Continue reading “The 2014 school year to produce Malaysia’s first batch of “miracle students” who would catapult to top-third of international educational benchmarks in 2021 and 2022 has started but Muhyiddin is still mysteriously silent how this “miracle” is to be achieved”