Leadership Matters

The Malaysia Study Visit has been reported on in the latest edition of 'Leadership Matters'.

Leadership Matters

Sri KDU High School

Mrs Chang showed us through from the primary school following our excellent buffet and we crossed the University style campus over to the Socndary school. Here, as with the primary, the facilities were impressive; characterised by wide, cool corridors with hundreds of rooms, many of which appeared empty, a sign of the space available in Malaysian school system. We were later to find this was not exclusive to the private schools, but also in the rural schools. In the UK, this sort of space is a luxury unheard of!

We met with the management team before embarking on the school tour. The children were still on their lunch hour for part of the tour so we had the opportunity to see them making the most of their facilities; badminton, table tennis and other sports were all going on informally.

The school have recently introduced the International Baccaulaureate programme and IB students were busy at work using their state of the art library. Here the students have the non uniform status that sixth formers aspire to back home. The secondary students shared the smart uniform of their primary counterparts with even the socks being Sri KDU issue with stitching with the school's name on.

The facilties continue to impress us along our tour; drama rooms, swimming pool and sports facilities accomodating all known team sports. There was even a drumming studio with full drum kits set up. The teachers are keen to share their enthusiasm for the school with us.

We then split into groups to see a number of lessons, on offer we are invited to Science, Maths, English and Madarin. Myself and Nikki go into a year 9 maths lesson. The students are hard at work as we enter and they stand to welcome us 'Good afternoon teachers'. The desks all face the front and they are working on plotting algebraic functions on graphs. They were all very studious as we moved round to talk to them, they appeared shy and a bit nervous at our attention. We consider how this lesson is not dissimilar to maths lesson you would expect to see in high schools in the UK; there is use of the intereactive whiteboard and some paired discussion during the independent work. This is more interactive than the chalk and talk we may have expected. Although following the primary science lesson I had observed at Sri KDU primary earlier that morning, where meal worms were being examined with magnifying glasses to teach the topic of life cycles, that myth had already been dispelled.

After our short lesson visit we return to the meeting room where a forum had been set up. This is a very interesting element ot our visit. We have the opportunity to sit in small gorups with staff, school leaders and students themselves. I sit with Azhar Abdullah, the IB Business and Management teacher and one of the students, a very articulate young man who is very enthusiastic about both his school and on expressing his views on the Malaysian education system. Both are very interested in hearing Liana and me share our views on what we have seen and on our comments on the obvious differences we have observed.

What comes across most clearly is the extreme pride both teachers and students share in their school. Whilst in any formal set up such as this, the students would be carefully handpicked, it is difficult to be anything other than impressed with the caliber of this student and the way he articulates his comments on the issues being discussed. We talk about the issue of language and multi-cultural society in Malaysia which is so beyond where we are in the UK. They are interested that in the UK we are now assessed in Ofsted terms on the effectiveness of our Community Cohesion provision. We also share our awe of the Malaysians' approach to language learning.

Here the majority of students are Chinese Malaysians and many speak English at home. We had learn fromHugh that Chinese Malaysians make up some 30% of the Malaysian population. This is an interesting statistic in terms of what percentage is being represented here in a private school. Languages here may be less of an issue than in other Malay schools we visit later in the week but we must give them credit for the range of other languages they have on offer. We have already seen students in a language lab learning Mandarin at primary level.

Following the forum, Mrs Chang made some closing comments and Caroline presented the school with our gifts. We were delighted to receive gifts ourselves with momentos of the school for us to take away with us. as we leave I manage a photo opportunity with two (I suspect polite rather than willing) students to have a photo with our school mascot to post on our school VLE. I regret not having done this at the primary school at this point as I m aware of how I am compromising their street cred, and my own, by having them pose with the stuffed toy!

We all leave Sri KDU excited that we have one Malaysian school visit under our belts and eager to learn more as the week progresses. The question of how this will compare with state schools is considered by all of us over the course of the evening.

Sri KDU

Sri KDU - http://www.srikdu.edu.my/main.php

Our first experience of Malaysian schools was Sri KDU Primary school,  is a private school that follows the Malaysian National Curriculum.

My first impression of the school was how open and modern it looked, with the architecture   maximising open spaces.  This helped us in the very high humidity!  We were greeted by Mrs Chan, the Principal of both the Primary and the Secondary schools.  In our welcome briefing, we were told about the aims and the vision for the school, which was to nurture the mind, the heart and the soul.  From this they aimed to develop learners with Malaysian hearts and global minds.

Mrs Chan was keen to share with us her education philosophy of interactive teaching through group work and presentations.  From this, she hoped pupils would be better placed as they entered the work place, with the confidence to offer opinions and conduct presentations.  In light of this, the school offered character building programmes to embed values and promote positive attitudes.  

At this point, I think I speak for the group when I say that we were very keen to have the opportunity to get into the classrooms, speak to the pupils and teachers, and actually get a taste of the Malaysian school.  Up to this point, our induction sessions had set the scene and we were desperate to actually experience it.  We all leapt up eagerly when the headteacher of the primary school, Mr Roderick, offered us the opportunity to split up and visit various lessons.  

I chose to visit an English class of pupils who were nine and ten.  The lesson was fascinating to observe, both in the similarities as well as the differences.  When we entered we were greeted by twenty beaming faces, all of whom stood behind their chairs and chanted loudly “Good morning teacher!”  It was a phrase that became very familiar over the next few days!  The children were sitting in pairs facing the front of the class, where the lesson was being delivered through an interactive whiteboard.  

The objective of the lesson was plurals, and it followed a fairly standard Literacy hour format.  It was the first experience of a Malaysian classroom, and the children certainly impressed us with their bright enthusiasm. One of the key differences was the use of children chanting instructions and answers and every time the children were asked to read or recite, they did loudly and clearly.  

We then joined back with the rest of our group for the tour of the school, the highlight of which was the ballroom dancing lesson - yes, ballroom dancing!  It was wonderful to watch the professional dance instructor leading the class in the Cha-cha-cha.  We were able to see the incredible facilities, including a swimming pool, tennis courts and drama studio.  One very noticeable difference, was the teams of cleaners who did an fantastic job constantly cleaning the building, ready to sweep a leaf aside the second it swirled to the floor.  

After our tour, we were then invited to a delicious buffet, where the school prefects sternly kept other pupils away (which was a shame, as we would all have enjoyed a further opportunity to chat to the children).  This relaxed lunch allowed to ask the teachers about their school.  One element which greatly impacted on me, was the pride that was taken in their school, whether through academic achievement or winning various competitions.  This was reflected in the prefect system, which was very evident in every school that we visited through the week.  The prefects were very important members of the school community, who were developing early leadership skills and the ones who I spoke to were very proud of their responsibilities.

We left Sri KDU primary with an insight into how the private education system functioned in Malaysia and eager anticipation to compare this with the rest of the schools to be visited during the week.

SK Menjarala Primary School

On our fourth day we visited an average sized primary school on the outskirts of the city. The group were given the opportunity to split to focus their visits, half of the group spent the morning at the primary base and the other half at the secondary base.

We received a very warm welcome and were shown around the school by the senior leadership team. The school has 350 pupils, 28 rooms, 12 classes and their year groups are streamed and taught in ability groups. There is also a pre-school unit attached to the school where the children start from the age of 6.There was a real sense of space and warmth about the school. The children were very enthusiastic to meet us and asked lots of questions!

A large part of our reflection was focussed on the strong sense of moral teaching and the importance of values. The school have their own song which talks about groups, team work, family units, working hard and the children talked about this with pride.

It was interesting for us to note that the senior leadership team was male dominated, which was very refreshing. The Malaysian Education system is similar to the English in the sense that there are many more female primary teachers than male. The SLT were proud to show us around their school and appeared to have a good working relationship with the rest of the staff.

During our visit we impressed to observe the busy lunchtime environment, the children were all eating in a very sociable manner and were encouraged to take responsibility for tidying up their space. There were also food triangles on the tables to help children make healthy food choices.

The pre-school was a real highlight for us, the children were delightful and ery excited to perform a song and dance for us. Their teacher was very enthusiastic and appeared to be very dedicated to her job. The children has a very well resources classroom with lots of exciting games and objects for counting and learning. The displays were of the brightest that we observed in any of the schools. The children were extremely happy and their environment was bright and busy.

The teaching and learning was quite different from that in England, still very chalk and talk, however the school leaders were forward thinking and were aware that the move to group work and indepenent learning was important.

The school was a thriving community of happy children, hard working staff and strong morals. The visit was a wonderful experience and the warmth of the staff and pupils will be remember by us all.