Malaysia Economic Monitor, December 2013 : High-Performing Education
Malaysia's economy regained momentum but yearly growth is set to decelerate in 2013. Export recovery into 2014 is expected to offset slower domestic demand and lead to a pick-up in growth. Fiscal consolidation is picking up pace with subsidy c...
| Main Authors: | , , |
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| Format: | Economic Updates and Modeling |
| Language: | English en_US |
| Published: |
World Bank, Bangkok
2014
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/2013/12/18645043/malaysia-economic-monitor-high-performing-education http://hdl.handle.net/10986/16705 |
| Summary: | Malaysia's economy regained
momentum but yearly growth is set to decelerate in 2013.
Export recovery into 2014 is expected to offset slower
domestic demand and lead to a pick-up in growth. Fiscal
consolidation is picking up pace with subsidy cuts, sin tax
increases, and less generous public service bonuses. The
full implementation of the minimum wage in January 2014 will
provide an additional boost to households, as will increased
cash transfers that are part of the government's
strategy for subsidy rationalization and modernizing social
protection. Malaysia performs very well with respect to
access to education. Enrolments at primary and lower
secondary levels are nearly universal and recent gains in
pre-primary education have been note-worthy. Among East
Asian countries that participated in the 2012 Program for
International Student Assessment (PISA), Malaysian students
only outperform their Indonesian peers, and lag even
lower-income countries (including, by a wide margin,
Vietnam). Expenditure on basic education is more than double
that of other Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)
countries and the decline in learning outcomes occurred
while inputs to education were expanding and the size of the
student population was falling. The key constraints to
improving the quality of basic education thus relate not to
the quantity of inputs but institutions. 46 percent of
principals report a lack of qualified teaching staff as a
constraint, and Ministry of Education (MOE) admits that in
recent years some candidates enrolling in teacher training
institutions did not meet minimum requirements of academic
achievement at the secondary level. Lifting these
constraints entails refining some of the measures
recommended in the Education Blueprint for high-performing
education system: (1) moving towards school-based
decision-making; (2) improving parental involvement and
enhancing accountability; and (3) improving incentives and
recruitment for teachers. The government may consider
piloting fixed contract recruitments with tenure contingent
on performance, and tying retraining and up-skilling efforts
with certification. |
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