PETALING JAYA: The government should consider hiring retired English teachers instead of getting Singapore to send its teachers to teach English and other subjects in Malaysia, said former minister Tan Sri Rafidah Aziz.
In a statement, yesterday, Rafidah said that if teachers from Singapore were employed, they would have to be paid in Singapore dollars.
“Three and a half times more because of the exchange rate.
“Why not get retired teachers in Malaysia with English teaching experience and proficiency. Many of them are available and pay them the Singapore equivalent rates,” suggested the former minister.
Rafidah also suggested that the teacher training syllabus be revised to include competency in English, and according to her, this can be done by utilising the expertise of the retired teachers in Malaysia. As well as the need for the school syllabus to include English proficiency.
“To make it ‘painless’, there’s no need to make English a subject as part of the overall examinations.
“Just one subject by itself as a ‘language’ and it doesn’t affect the ranking in the examination results,” she added.
This came after Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim’s remark that he had discussed with his Singaporean counterpart Lawrence Wong the possibility of sending Singaporean teachers to Malaysia.
“We did discuss the possibility of Singapore considering my humble submission of sending teachers to teach English or some other subjects to many regions in this country,” Anwar said.
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