Compiled by C. ARUNO, RAHIMY RAHIM and R. ARAVINTHAN
EDUCATIONIST group Jiao Zong is urging the Education Ministry to provide SJKCs with additional funds to hire more temporary teachers when schools reopen on Wednesday, Sin Chew Daily reported.
It said in a report that Chinese vernacular schools would be facing a shortage of 882 teachers come July 15 when pupils return to class.
“Apart from teaching duties, teachers will also be responsible for taking pupils’ temperatures and ensuring that they follow social distancing rules. This will add to their already heavy burden,” it said.Jiao Zong, also known as the United Chinese School Teachers’ Association, said if no additional funds were provided, school boards would be forced to use their own funds to hire more teachers or risk having classes disrupted.
It was earlier reported that the Education Ministry would allow schools to choose between three models when reopening.
Model 1 recommends schools to conduct lessons in one session.
Model 2 recommends a dual session for schools that cannot accommodate all their students in one session, while Model 3 recommends a rotational system where students attend classes on alternate days.
According to a survey conducted by Jiao Zong on 1,024 SJKCs throughout Malaysia, 94.38% would be adopting Model 1 while 5.34% would opt for Model 2.
Only three schools surveyed (0.28%) would be adopting Model 3.
When the Education Ministry changed its social distancing guidelines from 1m apart between tables to 1m apart shoulder-to-shoulder, it was now possible to accommodate more pupils, Jiao Zong said.
Out of the 5.34% (58 schools) which chose to split classes into morning and afternoon sessions, 53 had already been practising the model prior to the pandemic, while the remaining five had to do so due to space constraints.
> The daily also reported that tickets for all four of Taiwanese singer Hebe Tien’s concerts, scheduled to be held this September, were sold out in seconds.
A total of 33,000 tickets for the concerts at the Taipei Arena from Sept 25 to 28 were sold out as soon as they went on sale on Saturday.
“Thank you everyone!” Tien wrote on social media.
When fans asked if she was willing to hold additional concerts, her record label Pourquoi Pas Music replied it would consider this next year.
Tien, 37, rose to fame as part of the all-girl pop group S.H.E. in the early 2000s before going solo in 2010 with her self-titled debut album Hebe.
> Fans of married singers Rainie Yang and Li Ronghao finally got a glimpse of the marriage proposal a year after it took place, China Press reported.
Yang posted a vlog containing footage of the proposal on July 11, exactly one year after it happened.
The video showed Li going down on one knee proposing to Yang with a ring and a bouquet of flowers.
Yang, who was not wearing any make-up and was in pyjamas, was seen sobbing while nodding furiously.
Yang and Li, who are in Taiwan and China respectively, have not been able to see each other for more than three months due to Covid-19 travel restrictions.
They tied the knot in September last year after dating for four years.
The above articles are compiled from the vernacular newspapers (Bahasa Malaysia, Chinese and Tamil dailies). As such, stories are grouped according to the respective language/medium. Where a paragraph begins with a >, it denotes a separate news item.
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