Dzameer Dzulkifli is a consultant with the Education Ministry of Indonesia and co-founder of Teach for Malaysia. He says we should embrace an even bolder, larger vision of transformation than the current blueprint, in order to unleash the potential of our education system and students.
THE world is changing at an unprecedented pace, and the Malaysian education system is at a critical juncture. In the past decade, we continued to make significant strides in expanding access to education, and we saw incrementally stronger student outcomes.
However, that progress is still far behind the aspirations laid out in the Malaysia Education Blueprint 2013-2025, which aspired to be amongst the top third of countries in PISA. Today, our students continue to lag behind their international peers in key learning outcomes. The recent PISA 2022 results indicate that the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic has reset the past decade of progress.
The next blueprint (2026-2036) presents a pivotal opportunity to transform our education system to ensure that every child, regardless of background, can realise their potential and shape a better future for themselves and all of us — even as the world becomes more uncertain and complex.
It is encouraging that the Education Ministry is taking this forward looking approach, and seeking input broadly.
While we should build on the undelivered reforms laid out in the current blueprint, we must resist the temptation to pursue safe, incremental improvements that will lead us to an undesired, yet predictable future.
Instead we should embrace an even bolder, larger vision of transformation than the current blueprint, in order to unleash the potential of our education system and students.
The current blueprint has often been touted as an extremely comprehensive document, which international organisations like the World Bank recognise as aligned to global best practices. However, what is clearly recognised is that the blueprint falls short in its implementation fidelity.
Although it secured an unprecedentedly strong mandate, it became subject to the country’s most politically uncertain period in recent history. It also could have never accounted for the disruption of the Covid-19 pandemic. While it has prevailed as the guiding blueprint of the ministry, its mandate has been watered down, and many of its key reforms remain undelivered.
Before we consider what recommendations should be in the next blueprint, we need to first consider what conditions need to be in place in order for its successful implementation. This will require structural reform and a commitment to continuous transformation of the organisational culture of the ministry.
First, we should consider the mechanisms we can put in place to ensure that the blueprint’s mandate will supersede the disruption of shorter-term political cycles. A possible option is to establish an independent education commission with the mandate to evaluate education policies, publish independent reports, make policy recommendations, seed and scale innovations.
The commission’s role would not be to punitively hold the ministry accountable, but to support stronger decision-making in education policy as well as the development of education. It should include education reformers, practitioners (e.g. teachers and school leaders), academics, and representatives from civil society and the business community, who should be appointed through a transparent process.
It should report directly to a strengthened Parliament Select Committee on Education, and receive reports from the Inspectorate of Schools.
Thus, it would be able to make cross-cutting recommendations, which would help the ministry to gain the support it needs to implement reforms beyond its immediate sphere of responsibility.
Second, we should foster a deep culture of continuous learning and further develop distributed, collective leadership within the ministry.
There remains a strong top-down culture, in which people are incentivised to do what they are told to do, even when they know that might not be the best course of action for their context.
One of the significant practices implemented as a part of the current blueprint is the Performance Dialogues. These dialogues were intended to allow schools, district and state departments to share successes and challenges regarding their performance, and seek the support needed to move forward.
However, oftentimes, these dialogues can feel more judgmental than developmental, and therefore don’t always end up addressing the issues authentically. So we need to focus on fostering a culture of safety, support and collective ownership that will enable the system to authentically dialogue about its challenges, and develop collective solutions.
Finally, we should think about creating more avenues for innovative solutions to be deployed and sustained within the ministry.
There need to be more avenues for effective public-private partnerships to address key challenges. This could also look like an independent education endowment fund that is established to seed, evaluate and scale effective innovations in the system, as recommended by the independent commission.
Other avenues would be to provide more empowerment for local leadership to address contextual challenges. This could look like more innovative ways for schools to hire teachers to address shortage and quality needs, or more innovative ways for districts to decide how schools could be operated.
Increased empowerment would have to come alongside capacity building to ensure these innovations are supported effectively.
As we focus on putting in place the structural and cultural conditions, we can then begin to think of what we should be doing and the changes we want to make.
And I encourage everyone to contribute their suggestions to the ministry via the following link: https://www.moe.gov.my/pelanpendidikan2026/public/
This article first appeared in Star Biz7 weekly edition.
