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.