Writer’s name: Noraini Binti Salleh

Course : PITO TESL TSLB2029P

Instructor: Mr. Inderjit a/l Goman Sing Sunar IPGM - ELTC
Date : 16 September 2021

Issues in Remedial Education in Malaysia

Across the year, remedial education in Malaysia has become a favourite discussion topic and research
by many professionals in the education field. Remedial education is designed for students who have average
or higher intelectual abilities but who are not performing well in school (“What Is Remedial Education and
Why Are These Programs Demand?”2021). Remedial education is the answer to cater to different needs of the
students. Therefore, preparing the students to become the global player, aligned with one of the main goals in
the “Malaysia Education Blueprint (2013-2025)” issued by the Ministry of Education that is to equip our
students holistically to allow them to succeed in the 21st century, with all of the opportunities and challenges
that this new era presents (Ministry of Education, 2012, p. 8). It turned out to give a lot of advantages to many
authorities. However, remedial education in Malaysia could not run away from the issues which hindered the
progress along its implementation. This discussion will focus on one of the issue that had been documented by
researchers, which is about the lack of support for teachers.

Workload is a never-ending issue for teachers in many schools in Malaysia. According to Norashid &
Hamzah, 2014 from their research, most of the academic teachers in a school in Ranau Sabah experienced a
high workload. Without a doubt, teachers are the backbones of the successful output or products from the
remedial programs that are structured by the Ministry of Education in Malaysia. They are the one to confront
the students every school days. Hence, teachers need to know their students different abilities before delivering
lessons and assessment in the class, whether the students are underachiever or advance. When remedial
education were made compulsory in classroom, teachers start to brainstorm ideas and sweats to ensure they
will not leave anyone behind when delivering the lesson. With all the differentiated instruction strategies to
follow and preparing materials, the workload is continuously for these determine teachers. Thus, it will effect
teacher’s motivation as reported in a research, ‘workload in school affect teaching and the student mastery of
3R is special remedial programme(Hamdan, 2006).

Time management when implementing remedial classes is another major problem that we can discuss
when talking about remedial education issues. Most of the teachers have more than 1 class per day, and the
high number of students is something that the school administrators should pay attention when implementing
remedial education. Moreover, not only teachers need to prepare materials for different level strategies to
maintain the students’ attention to in a class, they need to prepare it for more than 1 class per day and
sometimes with different subjects. According to circular KPM.BPKHAS.300-2/2/12, dated 4th August 2010 on
the roles of Special Remedial Teachers in the implementation of the LINUS programme, the time allocated for
teaching is between 900 minutes to 1020 minutes a week. However, a study found that there are teachers who
teach up to 1200 minutes because they have for remedial students Year 1 to Year 6 remedial students
(Hamdan, 2014).

Nonetheless, remedial education has also give high impact to teacher’s teaching skills, especially when
it involves IT tools and ICT skills. Preparing online lessons or activities may be the answer for teachers to
manage their time and lesson the workload. Many teachers are generous to share their materials on the
internet. In conclusion, it is up to the teachers to adapt and adopt to their classroom to give effective
teaching and learning in a vary abilities classroom.

(584 words)