KUALA LUMPUR, Oct 27 – Education Minister Datuk Seri Mahdzir Khalid told the Dewan rakyat here Monday that there was eighth National Blue Ocean Strategy (NBOS) that focuses on addressing teachers’ administrative workload through the Repositioning of Teachers’ Core Duties initiative will be expanded nationwide.
“The move was to assist and ease the burden of teachers. On the whole, the implementation of the pilot project has managed to reduce the teachers’ administrative workload and ICT technical scope from an average three hours to 7.4 hours a week depending on the type of assignment duty held by the teachers,” he said.
The initiative, under the Teachers Profession Enhancement programme in dealing with the teachers’ workload in a comprehensive way, is currently being implemented by the Education Ministry through the pilot projects in Melaka and also in Kedah.
Under the initiative, teaching assistants comprising administrative assistant (administration/operation) Grade N17 (PT N17) and computer technician Grade FT17 (JK FT17) are placed in schools to lessen the administrative and operation as well as special assignment ICT teachers’ technical workload of data teachers, media and library teachers and smart coordinator teachers.
He was replying to a question by Mohd Fasiah Mohd Fakeh on the steps taken by the government to reduce the workload outside their job description for over 500,000 affected teachers. Meanwhile, Higher Education Minister Datuk Seri Idris Jusoh also said all public universities should reduce overdependence on government financing and use their expertise, assets and private consultation to raise income and finance university costs following a reduction on the ministry’s budget next year.
He was replying to a supplementary question from Dr Tan Seng Giaw (DAP-Kepong) on the ministry’s alternative move following a reduced budget being allocated by the government in the 2016 Budget. The 2016 Budget allocated RM13.378 billion to the Higher Education Ministry, which is five per cent from the overall budget compared to RM15.785 billion in the 2015 Budget.
