Despite having almost universal primary to lower secondary enrollment, Malaysian students are getting a poorer and poorer quality of education, the World Bank said.

In its report launched yesterday, the World Bank said that “quality of education has not kept pace” with students lagging behind lower income countries, including “by a wide margin, Vietnam”.

“Malaysia now has near universal access, offering affordable schooling for children from all income levels.” said Ulrich Zachau, World Bank Country Director for Malaysia, in a statement.

“Malaysia faces the challenge of turning schooling into learning. Our analysis suggests three priorities: moving more decisions to schools, information to parents, and good teachers into classrooms. We welcome recent initiatives in Malaysia that begin moving in these directions.”

Just as Malaysian 15-year-olds were found to be three years behind their Singaporean peers, Malaysian teachers were also to be of poorer quality, World Bank said its report released Tuesday.

The World Bank said that while in Singapore only the top 30 percent of performers are accepted into the profession, 98 percent of those applying to do a Bachelor of Education do not even meet the minimum entry requirement of 3As in the Sijil Pelajaran Malaysia.

Of the primary level English Language teachers tested, only 25 percent were found to be sufficiently proficient, with older teachers found to be more competent in English than their younger counterparts. Language flip-flop a disruption

According to the World Bank, Malaysia’s sharp decline in education quality is best exemplified in the International Mathematics and Science Study where students scored above international average in 1999 and 2003 but did poorly in 2007 and 2011.

“Up to 38 percent of students in Malaysia did not meet the minimum benchmarks in Mathematics and Science in 2011, an approxiately two-fold increase since 2007 and five times higher than in 1999,” it said.

This it argued, meant that Malaysian “schooling is not translating into learning”, and is reflective in the labour market which is not as highly-skilled as the industry would prefer.

Among reasons for this, it said, could be a flip flop in teaching medium from English to Bahasa Malaysia in 1970 then back to English for Mathematics and Science in 2003 and then back again in 2007.

It said that the side-effects of these changes were a “decline in English-language skills” and “ethnic stratification” – English-medium private schools had a more diverse student population.

It added that while teaching in a language familiar to students helps learning, flip-flopping in policy “disrupts learning and skill acquisition”.

It posits that the 2003 switch to English may have led to a dip in the TIMMS, with a drop seen across the board among Malay and non-Malay students.

The World Bank also found the Malaysian education system is too centralised, with schools and teachers having very little autonomy.

“Most countries whose students perform well on international student achievement tests give their local authotiries and schools substantial autonomy over adapting and implementing education content or allocating and managing resources,” it said. Flaws in blueprint It said that while some reforms are seen in the National Education Blueprint, the blueprint itself has flaws.

For example, there is little elaboration on what the school-based management would entail.

“Given that the Malaysian Ministry of Eductaion intends to head towards school-based management eventually, it may wish to develop a more detailed vision for what schools, states and districts would look like under (it),” it said.

Additionally, the World Bank commends the blueprint for seeking to place higher entry requirements for the teaching profession but calls on the government only to hire those who can demonstrate performance after graduation.

To attract top students to the profession, the bank suggests the government provide full scholarships to top secondary schools students to study to become teachers, like in Singapore and Hong Kong.

However, it said, given the young age of teachers in the system, “low-ability and low-skilled teachers currently in the system will stay in the system for decades”.

As such, it gives a thumbs-up to plans to provide an exit plan for low-skilled teachers as well as training for upskilling for those who are staying.