IPOH: The Education Ministry on Saturday (May 16) announced 12 initiatives to empower and strengthen the role of teachers in conjunction with the 55th national-level Teachers' Day celebration this year.
Education Minister Fadhlina Sidek (pic) said the Google Certified Educator (GCE) Level 1 and Level 2 certification courses would continue to be offered free of charge to all teachers to support their professional development in digital literacy.
She said the initiative would benefit teachers nationwide, with the ministry bearing the cost of RM40 per teacher for GCE Level 1 and RM100 per teacher for GCE Level 2.
Fadhlina also said the ministry would offer a special Federal Training Award to teachers serving in schools in hardship areas including hospital classes, floating schools and rural schools in P1, P2 and P3 areas.
"They will be selected to pursue Master's and PhD (Doctor of Philosophy) programmes to ensure that our aspirations are achieved, particularly in enabling them to continue serving, while their studies will help them to continue contributing to the profession," she said at the celebration themed 'Guru Bitara Nadi Negara', officiated by Prime Minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim here Saturday.
Fadhlina also said that the ministry had allocated RM100mil to upgrade teachers' staff rooms nationwide, with another RM50mil set aside for maintenance of teachers' quarters.
Fadhlina said the Ministry would expand the Federal Teaching Scholarship to school leaders pursuing Master's degrees, urging headmasters, principals and senior assistants to seize the opportunity to further their studies.
Meanwhile, Fadhlina said the ministry was addressing demographic challenges faced by teachers in conducting online classes through the introduction of the Network Offline Digital Environment (NODE), aimed at ensuring digital learning could continue even without internet access.
"For the initiative, the Ministry, through sponsorship by the Tun Hussein Onn Teacher Foundation, had allocated RM1mil to strengthen its implementation in rural and island schools operating under hardship conditions," she said.
She also said RM169mil had been allocated to provide devices to schools to further strengthen co-curricular activities next year and ensure the smooth integration of technology in teaching and learning.
In addition, Fadhlina announced an extra RM100mil allocation for the maintenance and upgrading of teachers' staff rooms nationwide, while RM50mil had been set aside for the maintenance of teachers' quarters to provide more comfortable and conducive living conditions.
She said the manual co-curricular recording system would be abolished, with schools given the autonomy to manage co-curricular records based on their respective needs and creativity before entering students' information into the Physical, Sports and Co-curricular Activity Assessment (PAJSK) system.
Meanwhile, RM10.5mil had been allocated to provide additional reading materials for all 10,515 preschool classes nationwide through the Preschool Reading Culture Empowerment Programme (PAKAT programme).
"An allocation of RM122.4mil for the first phase has been channelled directly to schools to implement Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM), Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) and co-curricular programmes," she said.
Fadhlina also said the Tun Hussein Onn Teacher Foundation would provide RM1,000 assistance to teachers whose children obtained 10As in the Sijil Pelajaran Malaysia (SPM) 2025 examination.
She further announced a 50% discount for the first six months of school canteen rental payments, expressing hope that the measure would help maintain affordable and quality food for the school community. - Bernama
