Heart of Gold

Teresa Lee with young kids in Timor-Leste

As 2006 winds to an end today, I thought it'll be great to showcase a young Malaysian with a heart of gold. Spunky Teresa Lee have a "zeal for helping the poor, displaced and marginalised," writes Casian Kang in the Star Education Supplement today.

25-year-old Teresa serves as an international aid worker with World Vision currently working out of Timor-Leste, which has only in recent years secured independence from Indonesia.

Teresa believes that those stuck in the cycle of poverty deserve a better life As aid workers, poverty stricken countries, natural disaster areas and war zones are their workplaces.

Lee had spent the previous 12 months in both Indonesia and Cambodia volunteering her time and skills in local aid assistance programmes. She was involved with developing English radio programmes and also assisted with medical clinics in villages.

Teresa actually counts herself lucky in Timor for "At least I have running water, gas and electricity which was not the case in Indonesia." Like Suzanne Lee who was profiled here a while back, Teresa clearly has the determination to pursue her own dreams, making sure that they get fulfilled through her own efforts for "Lee has always wanted to be engaged in something meaningful."

So what does her job involve?

There are still a large number of displaced children in Timor Leste. World Vision has long-term projects in Food and Livelihood Security, Water and Sanitation, Health, Youth Development, Child Protection and Peacebuilding. I help out across most of them.

Basically, a small part of my role is to help ensure that World Vision’s emergency response is part of a collaborative approach because coordination between different NGOs and aid agencies is crucial during emergency situations.

Apart from dealing with crisis relief, we are also involved in long-term development projects. These projects are fundamental to our role here as International Development Workers. While emphasis is always on emergency short-term relief, long-term development work in contrast, is more crucial towards addressing root causes of issues such as poverty and violence.

One of the many projects that I am part of is the Inter-agency Watsan Working Group, which provides water and sanitation to the IDP camps. I help coordinate the distribution of water and sanitation contingency items such as tarpaulins, rope and soap to other aid agencies which then distribute them to refugees at the IDP camps.

I have to ensure that projects are progressing well and gauge how the affected community is feeling about these projects. In the midst of all this, I also assist local staff increase the quality of programmes and their English capabilities.

Teresa loves her job because she gets to play a "part in opening up opportunities for people to improve their situation can be very rewarding."

This can involve securing funding for a health education project so that communities can learn how to avoid getting sick from preventable diseases. When I hear stories of how our projects have helped communities, such as giving them access to clean water or increasing their agricultural crops, I feel excited. It’s nice to know that there is change happening.

Yes, Teresa gets paid for her role as an aid worker. However, that still doesn't take away the immense sacrifices she has made being away from home, living in less then ideal conditions and getting her hand "dirty".

Everyone of us young Malaysians have our part to play in this world, and I certainly hope that there are many more who will take the path less trodden, inspired by gutsy youths like Teresa Lee. ;)

Vouchers, National Education Fund and School League Tables

I was alerted to these two letters recently published in the Sun and the Star by the author of the letters. The content of both letters is similar. The author, Wan Saiful Wan Jan, is Director-General of Malaysia Think Tank London. He basically recommends three proposals as ways to improve the standards of schools in Malaysia: a targeted voucher system, a National Education Fund, a school league table that is published every six months.

Given that the links to the Sun and the Star might be taken down or the urls might be changed later, I've copied the meat of Wan Saiful's proposals and pasted them below:

To overcome this, I propose three strategies. First, introduce a targeted voucher system. Second, set up a National Education Fund funded solely by corporate and individual donations. Third, publish a school league table every six months.

The targeted vouchers give parents with low household income the necessary funds. The vouchers can only be used to pay for education.

Through this system, schools no longer get automatic funding from the state. Instead, “vouchers” are given directly to parents who can then use the vouchers to pay for their children’s education needs at a school of their choice.

The National Education Fund would be funded by the private sector and individual contributions, not the Government. Companies and individuals who donate would gain tax relief as an incentive. Money from this Fund can be used to top up the vouchers if necessary, especially to assist the very poor to pay for other costs like transport, books and school uniform.

Removing school-based funding and giving money directly to parents would effectively make schools like any other private companies offering a service.

Schools must compete to offer services that are the best value for money. Schools that fail to deliver risk closure because parents would simply not send their children there.

The six-monthly league table would provide parents with a tool to compare performance of schools and therefore help their decision making process. It would also inject more competition to improve the schools.

Similar systems have proven to be effective in countries around the world. The report submitted to the Education Minister by Malaysia Think Tank London provides evidence of these successes.

I'm personally in favor of Proposals 1 and 3. The economist in me (the late Milton Friedman was a highschool hero of mine) supports giving parents more choice, providing them with more information and introducing more competition into the education system.

Out of the two proposals, I think that Proposal 3 is probably easier to implement in the short run. Singapore has been publishing school league tables for more than 15 years now and I've been a strong proponent of a similar system being set up in Malaysia.

I'm more sceptical about the 2nd proposal which is the setting up of a National Education Fund for the following reasons:

(i) Cost to the government - if the donations are tax deductible, the more successful this program is at eliciting donations, the more its costs the government in terms of revenue forgone, revenue that could have been used to spend on other parts of the education system such as building more schools.

(ii) Little incentives to donate - the flipside is that if the tax relief is too low, there's little incentive to donate to this fund and which defeats the purpose of setting up this fund in the first place.

(iii) Administrative problems - if this fund is substantial enough, it will not be easy to administer. Imagine having to process all sorts of applications for textbook money from poor students or from schools representing these poor students. Such a fund might be costly to administer and inefficient to boot.

I think that new ideas should be injected into our education system. The problem is that these ideas take a long time to 'seep' up to our leaders and also civil servants, especially those in the Ministry of Education. And even if these ideas are approved, we usually run into massive implementation problems. (Think late delivery of school text books when there has been a significant change in the syllabus or when the medium of instruction for Math and Science was changed from BM to English)

I will email Wan Saiful to ask him for his full paper and will write further posts on this issue. I'd encourage those who are interested in his report to email him directly. His details are found below:

Wan Saiful Wan Jan is Director-General of Malaysia Think Tank London. Previously, he was at the Commonwealth Policy Studies Unit (CPSU) and the Conservative Party's Research Department (CRD). The report "Introducing Choice and Competition into Malaysia's Education System" is available free by contacting Wan Saiful via email at: wansaiful@malaysiathinktank.org.

In the meantime, if anyone else has any other reports from this education workshop in Nottingham, England in November, 2006 (last month), please email myself (im_ok_man@yahoo.com) and Tony (tonypua@yahoo.com).

National Education Blueprint 2006-2010

Thanks to Charis for this headsup. I wanted to blog about this earlier but for some reason, I couldn't connect to www.nst.com.my during the Christmas period. It was announced last Sunday that the Ministry of Education would publish and distribute its National Education Blueprint 2006-2010. I wanted to highlight two things, one, regarding the tone of the statements made by the Minister of Education, Hishamuddin Tun Hussein and two, regarding the importance of this Blueprint.

Firstly, I found the tone and words used by Hisham to be totally different from the tone of his message in the last two UMNO Youth General Assembly meetings. This could be due to the fact that he's speaking in his capacity as Minister of Education, not UMNO Youth Chief, and also the fact that NST might have choosen the most 'progressive' parts of his interview / statements to highlight.

For example:

"We need to face up to the fact that Malaysians have to compete with billions of our fellow Asians who are hungry for the kind of prosperity and stability we have achieved over the past 20 years.

"They will work harder and smarter because they are hungrier.

"All Malaysians, especially the Malay community, have to come to terms with this fact.

"If we don’t rise to the ever-increasing critical challenges, we will return to being losers in the global race.

"I also feel the blueprint has approached most of the issues from a purely market perspective, whereby we have looked at satisfying the needs and demands of the market."

He also pointed out that one of the reasons for publishing and distributing this blueprint was to generate more accountability on the part of the Ministry:

The document will spell out the ministry’s approaches for the next five years, including timelines on its delivery of goals.

It will also show how the mammoth RM23 billion allocation for education will be distributed under the Ninth Malaysia Plan.

Mindful that "everyone has an opinion on education", the ministry will also explain its direction for key areas such as the strengthening of national schools, its "clusters of excellent schools", access to education, and empowering teachers.

Admitting that the Malaysian education system was at the crossroads, Education Minister Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Hussein said the blueprint would ensure the ministry’s goals were reflected and planned in a transparent and deliverable manner.

Themed, "Pioneering Change — A National Mission", the blueprint would allow all those involved and interested in education to be clear on where the ministry is heading and how it wants to get there, he said.

I think many Malaysians would have wanted to listen to this Hishamuddin at the UMNO Youth GA compared with the keris-bearing Hisham who actually showed up. Many of the things he said at this interview did really sound progressive and far-sighted, which surprised me a little.

Secondly and more importantly, I'm wonder out loud as to how much this Blueprint will be 'followed' and how 'accountable' the Ministry will be to its promises as outlined in this Blueprint. Many people have told me and I've observed this phenomenon myself - Malaysia (or specifically the Malaysian government) is great when it comes to producing documents (visions, plans, blueprints etc...) but drops the ball at the implementation phase.

I'm reminded by the failure of former Education Minister Musa Muhammed's 10-year Education Development Blueprint 2001-2010 to make any significant impact in shaping our education system. For some historical perspective, you can read what Lim Kit Siang had to say about this here and here.

Some of the policies implemented seemed to contradict those outlined in the Musa plan and in some case, Dr. M seemed to have overidden the Minister on certain key decisions. Will the same happen to Hisham? Will the lack of continuity at this key Ministry affect the implementation of this Blueprint if a cabinet reshuffle takes Hisham to another Ministry? Only time well tell.

In the meantime, I hope that all of us can do our part in reading, analyzing and distilling the contents of the National Education Blueprint 2006-2010 when it will be posted on MOE's website on January 12, 2007. More importantly, I hope all of us can do our part in trying to keep the Ministry accountable to its own Blueprint.

Singapore-MIT Alliance Scholarship

Someone in the earlier post on Scholarship opportunities for postgraduates... well, here's one. ;)

The Singapore-MIT Alliance (SMA) is a collaboration between National University of Singapore (NUS) and Nanyang Technological University (NTU) in Singapore and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the United States. SMA offers dual degrees: either a Masters degree from MIT and a Masters degree from NUS/NTU; or a Masters degree from MIT and a PhD from NUS/NTU; or a PhD degree from either NUS or NTU.

Unlike our very own failed RM100 million collaboration with MIT at Malaysia University of Science and Technology (MUST), SMA has proven to be a successful and thriving alliance between the Singapore universities and MIT.

The SMA Graduate Fellowship includes:

• Full support for tuition and fees at MIT and either NUS or NTU
• Monthly stipend of up to S$2500
• Roundtrip airfare between Singapore and Boston
• Additional living allowance during residency at MIT

Five graduate programmes will be offered by SMA for the July 2007 intake.

To find out more on the programmes, requirements, admissions and application deadlines, please click here.

Application opens: From September 2006 onwards
Application deadlines: Between January - March 2007, varies with programmes.

For any enquiries, please contact SMA at Tel: (65) 6516 4787 and Fax: (65) 6775 2920

Or alternatively, you can email them or check out their website.

Christmas and New Year Greetings

Apologies for not blogging the last week or so. Was busy finishing my term and had to go to DC for a meeting with a friend. Before I dive into the latest education issues, here's wishing our readers a blessed, thoughtful and reflective Christmas and New Year. Party responsibly, eat well and enjoy your time with your loved ones.

A Dedicated Educator (II)

I adapted the Reader's Digest story of headmaster Mr Tiong Ting Ming's selfless dedication towards building a better school and providing quality education for his students and community earlier. If you thought the little snippet was inspiring, then you need to read this post. It'll provide you with a lot more insight on what Mr Tiong did to bring technology to his students as well as what he incredibly achieved despite the many hurdles and obstacles. Much of the information below is extracted from a seminar paper presented in 2005 provided to the bloggers of this site. ;)

As a bit of background, there are about 2,000 secondary schools in Malaysia of which 78 are Chinese Conforming Schools which are collectively known as Sekolah Menengah Jenis Kebangsaan (SMJK) and are categorized under Bantuan Modal Schools.

The land where SMJKs are sited belong to the Board of Governors (BOGs) who are responsible for the physical development of the school. The key draw back for SMJKs is that the public at large is responsible for the funding of any school projects. The Bantuan Modal scheme provides only some grants for the schools' physical development. However the main advantage is that the school has the flexibility to implement projects without much interference from the authority.

One of the first things Mr Tiong did after being appointed as headmaster for SMJK Dindings way back in 1992 was identifying ICT as one of the key strategies for improving the school in terms of teaching, learning, communications and administration. He placed his vision for the school in a strategic paper and spent 5 tireless years turning SMJK Dindings into a high-tech learning institution. Readers might note that by 1997 the ICT and Internet bug hasn't really caught on in Malaysia. The Government only released the various tenders for the Smart School programme in that year.

During the 5 painful years, Mr Tiong traveled all over the country, “begged and twisted the arms of many people into donating to rebuild the school, netting more than RM1 million in cash and kind”. All that was raised went into the renovation of the older school buildings and the construction of a new three-storey building which is more often refers to as "cyber-classrooms".
The new building was fully 'connected' via conduits for data cables setting up a school-wide Local Area Network (LAN). The laying of the copper and fibre optic cables were undertaken by Sapura Network Integrator, Thomas & Betts, a US-based company and the students of SMJK Dindings.

Mr Tiong's enterprising spirit is almost unbelievable, even to a seasoned Internet entrepreneur like myself. Together with his students, they really went to the ends of the earth, enabled by the Internet to seek out the best deals for the schools with its limited funds.

While the initial years depended on the generosity of the local corporations such as Sapura Holdings, Hock Hua Bank Bhd and 3Com Asia Pacific Ltd, Mr Tiong knew that such consistent and continued charity are going to be hard to come by. Hence, key technology equipment such as hubs, switches, network interface cards and other computer accessories were purchased from eBay.com at a rock bottom prices when the Internet bubble burst. In fact, one of the students even traveled 6 times to the United States to ship the items back.

Additional hardware was purchased from Singapore or through local auction sites such as Lelong.com.my. In 2005, the school started to purchase large numbers of refurbished CPU and servers from Dell that come with 5-year extended warranty, part and labour. The deployment of the used and refurbished hardware certainly enabled the school to maximise returns from the limited financial resources.

So how “high-tech” is SMJK Dindings today?

Well, I can say that after reading his story, I have nailed a note in my head to visit the school one of this days. And I would encourage all Malaysian headmasters and headmasters-to-be to do the same, for there is much we can learn.

From what I can tell, the entire school is run using some of the best technology applications. Each student have their own RFID tags which linked themselves to the schools management system enabling attendance taking, school discipline via an online merit and demerit systems, library access, utilisation and much more. What is most interesting, is that not only will the system be accessed by the teachers, administrators and students, they are also monitored directly by the students' parents!

Mr Tiong is also not so “blinkered” by technology that he forgets the critical human factor.

“It is probably true that pupils have much higher levels of ability in ICT than many of those in the teaching profession. ICT is the new literacy skill and teachers have to grasp any available opportunity to enhance their ICT skills if they are to use it in the teaching and learning process. Pupils cannot be expected to become adept at the new technologies if the teachers themselves do not fully appreciate the potentials of these technologies.”

It is well-known that teachers often take a longer time to learn the new technologies and to integrate them into the everyday curriculum. SMJK Dindings provides a wide selection of ICT training for teachers and administrative staff. All the staff members must attend computer lessons, one and a half hour each week, learning more about email programs, Internet search tools, web designing, Office tools, computer hardware and trouble-shooting skills, Windows installation and even digital photography.

With so much ICT equipment in the school, maintenance, the Achilles heel of typical Malaysian government projects, will certainly be have been a challenge. Instead, the school turned this challenge into an opportunity by forming “cyber-brigades” which are given responsibilities to keep system downtime to a minimal level.

The cyber-brigades comprised Form 2 to Form 5 students. Software and Operating System maintenance are assisted by Form 4 and Form 5 students taking Information Technology and Computer Programming courses at SPM level. Network and servers maintenance are undertaken by ex-students working in Kuala Lumpur, either remotely or on-site during the weekends.

The story of the students and alumni taking charge is highlighted in the Star Education supplement on November 5nd. The two young men picture there are Mr Tiong's ex-students who came back to help in install network cables.

One of the more interesting projects undertaken by students in the school included a hands-on experience in laying a 700m multi-modal fiber-optic cable linking the school with a nearby primary school and kindergarten. The campus-wide high bandwidth network was probably the first of its kind in the country that was commissioned and maintained by teenagers.

As part of the curriculum, students are also assigned projects by teachers to encourage them to do research on the Internet to complement their traditional subjects. Some tertiary colleges do not even encourage such activities, much less a typical secondary school.

SMJK Dindings was a dwindling school quickly losing relevance to parents even in the neighbourhood when Mr Tiong was appointed its headmaster. His task to turn the school around was not helped by its location in the village, sandwiched between an oil palm estate and a coconut plantation.

Today, parents from far and wide sent their children to SMJK Dindings to study ICT related subjects. Students, teachers, administrative staff and parents are able to access information about Real-Time Attendance with RFID, students discipline, examination management, library management and co-curriculum activity via Internet and Intranet. All this was achieved with a meagre RM2 million in cash and kind which was collected over the past dozen years or so.

This is in stark contrast to the efforts of the Ministry of Education, which has spent hundreds of millions to build smart-schools and very little to show besides poorly maintained and under-utilised computer hardware and ICT equipment. The Ministry of Education should perhaps consider appointing Mr Tiong as the Director-General in-charge of Smart Schools in Malaysia for I'm certain that he'll help achieve Malaysia's goals to provide quality education with less than half the budget in less than half the time for ten-fold the returns.

Is the Minister of Education himself, or his senior officials too proud to eat humble pie at the expense of the nation?

Thank you, Mr Tiong for helping make Malaysia a better place for fellow Malaysians. This certainly makes a great Malaysian and Christmas story. ;)

US College Essay: Expert Advice

I think it's about time pre-university students start preparing and making applications to top universities overseas. Many of these applications will require you to write not just one, but a few college essays.

Well, Jennifer Johnson of the Wall Street Journal did a quick compilation of some frequently asked questions on writing college essays for university entrance. The admission directos at 3 top schools in the United States, Brown, Harvard and Virginia Universities provided the "expert advice". You can't get better 'informed' tips than this.

Q: What role does the essay or personal statement play in the admissions process? How much weight does it receive?

• BROWN: The essay plays a role slightly less important than the student's high-school performance. High-school performance carries the most weight, and is most important. Everything else -- testing, essays, recommendations, etc. -- carries about the same weight.
  
  
• HARVARD: Because we use no formulas in admissions, or in evaluating applications, there is no specific "weight" assigned to the essay. The importance of the essay depends on the case -- and on the extent to which an essay deepens or illuminates our understanding of the applicant.
  
  
• VIRGINIA: Although we do not place numerical weights on the various factors we consider in an applicant, we count them as important in our coming to know the students better. We see the essays as a means for students to talk to us. They can say whatever is important to them and in doing so, give us a more human sense of who they are. We intentionally shape our several questions so that any student can probably find one that speaks to her or him and lets that person respond in a way that is unique.

Q: What makes a good college essay? How can students stand out among the crowd?

• BROWN: Essays that have simple themes, are personal and focused are most effective.
  
  
• HARVARD: A good essay extends the admissions committee's appreciation of the candidate, helps us to understand better "what makes him or her tick."
  
  
• VIRGINIA: We think a good essay question is one that separates the best students from those who are not as strong. In the same manner, a good essay is one that gives the admission deans a deeper look at the student -- it permits us to go well beyond the numbers we see on the transcript. After all, we are building a community of people and without an expression of their human qualities, we would be left with only statistics.
  
  They can stand out from the crowd by being themselves in their writing. Simple, plain language can be a persuasive part of the application.

Q: Are there any topics or techniques that students should avoid?

• BROWN: Don't write travelogues, don't rehash yesterday's editorial, and don't use gimmicks.
  
  
• HARVARD: It would be hard to proscribe specific topics, though I would advise using common sense in choosing a topic. As to techniques, legibility and clear expression are good techniques to use, always.
  
  
• VIRGINIA: Our parents always said not to discuss politics and religion at the dinner table, but some students write magnificent essays about either, both or just about any other subject. It all depends on how the writer handles it.

Q: How do you feel about online-editing services for college essays?

• BROWN: Not worth the time or money.
  
  
• HARVARD: We expect applications to be a student's own work, honestly presented.
  
  
• VIRGINIA: We ask our applicants to sign a statement on our application that the work is their own, and we take them at their word.

Q: About how many essays is your committee responsible for reading? And how do you divide the work?

• BROWN: We read 18,000 to 19,000 applications per year -- each application has four to six short and long essays. So, we read a lot. Applications are divided up among admission officers regionally.
  
  
• HARVARD: We received last year about 23,000 applications and each one is read carefully at least once. Assignments are made by geographic area. The first reader is the officer responsible for presenting the case -- and other cases from assigned areas -- to the admissions committee, and other officers read folders as well. Often, essays (and other materials from the folder) are read in committee meetings, sometimes more than once.
  
  
• VIRGINIA: We ask our deans to read 30 to 35 applications per day, and that includes the essays. On many days, they can't get them done in normal working hours and so they take them home at night or over the weekend to complete. Our process is holistic, and so we do not separate any part of the credentials for evaluation unless it is a portfolio for art or a tape for drama or music. We consider everything in the folder and within the context of the school or community.

I've read the above and I certainly think that they are extremely useful tips. Spend time understanding these tips and review your essays over and over (again). Good luck!

Thanks to Tinkosong.com for the link!