Schools that perform will be awarded high performance status

2009/11/12

JITRA: High performance schools will be turned into a benchmark of educational excellence for other schools, especially national schools, to emulate.

Disclosing this today, Education Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin said that was the ultimate aim of the ministry.

As the high performance status would be awarded to schools which reached or surpassed the benchmark, he said the government hoped more schools would strive to improve quality and become first choice for the public.

Muhyiddin, who is also deputy prime minister, said that as part of the National Key Result Areas for education, the government had set a target of creating 100 high-performing schools by 2012.

“The status will be awarded to the best of Malaysian schools with ethos, character and unique identity which enable students to excel in all aspects of education.

“These schools will have strong and excellent work cultures and provide dynamic national human capital for holistic and continuous development of our country,” he said at the closing ceremony of the First Regional Conference on Educational Leadership and Management at Institut Aminuddin Baki here.

Muhyiddin said, in the quest to improve the performance of schools, it was imperative to cultivate high performance leadership among school leaders.

“Headmasters, principals and members of school leadership teams must be dynamic, passionate, disciplined, know their subject well and be result-oriented.

“In building high performance, school leaders must identify clearly the specific challenges to be addressed, develop a clear focus on outcome and performance, and foster a culture of continuous improvement,” he noted.

He said, they must have a sense of urgency to challenge and seek better current ideas and practices to improve the quality of the management of schools and student learning.

Muhyiddin said, without high performance leadership, students would under-perform, management would break down and school quality would decline.

At a separate function in ALOR SETAR, Muhyiddin said he had directed school managements to ensure that equipments kept at schools were well-maintained.

Expressing disappointment over an incident where a ceiling fan fell and injured a form one student at a school in Negeri Sembilan last Tuesday, he said:

"The incident was probably caused by the school management's failure to monitor the condition of its electrical appliances.

"The ministry has left it to the schools to conduct safety inspections on their equipments because there are over 10,000 schools nationwide," he told reporters after visiting flood victims at the relief centre in Sekolah Kebangsaan Gunung here.

He said school principals and headmasters should ensure that equipments were well-maintained, adding that they could also seek cooperation from the public works department.

In the incident at Sekolah Menengah Kebangsaan Dengkil, Fahmi Harith Abu Bakar sustained injuries on the cheek and lips when the fan fell on him.- Bernama