KUALA LUMPUR: A system to find students who have stopped attending national school and help them return is already working, says Education Minister Datuk Dr Radzi Jidin.However, there were still about 2,000 more students who could not be located, he said.
He added that his ministry now wanted to use the system to intervene earlier and not when students had been out of school for too long.
“We learned that we need to do the tracing at the very beginning so that intervention can be done earlier and a lot more easily,” he said when officiating the Teach For Malaysia (TFM) 10th Anniversary celebrations yesterday.
Radzi said the ministry would also conduct a home visit programme to these students’ homes and families to find out why they were not attending school.
He said TFM teachers had already been doing this and the ministry aimed to expand this practice to stop students from dropping out of the education system at a young age.
He said his ministry could not tackle all the issues faced by the more than five million students in the country studying in over 10,000 schools with almost 500,000 teachers.
“We as a ministry cannot work alone. We need support from everyone outside who is willing to work with us,” he said, adding that TFM had been a partner for the past decade and hopefully, would continue working together with the ministry.
At the same event, TFM chairman and founding trustee Tunku Ali Redhauddin ibni Tuanku Muhriz said to date, there were 474 TFM fellows from 10 cohorts, with over 450 leaders leaving an impact on the lives of more than 330,000 students in high-needs schools.
He said they would continue to innovate and collaborate to address the many different challenges facing Malaysia’s education sector.
“With the cooperation of our partners, TFM is an example of what we can do for the betterment of our nation, where we come together for Malaysia,” he added.
During the event, TFM chief executive officer Chan Soon Seng introduced its long-term goal.
By 2030, it aims to be a movement of 30,000 leaders working collectively to enable children from underserved communities realise their potential through quality education.
