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.
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