Compiled by C. ARUNO, R. ARAVINTHAN and BENJAMIN LEE
CHINESE vernacular schools in Malaysia are short of over 1,350 teachers, according to the United Chinese School Teachers Association (Jiao Zong) in a China Press report.
The educationist group said the problem would worsen with more teachers retiring soon.
It blamed the Education Ministry, claiming that it did not adopt any of the group’s proposals to address the matter.
“Jiao Zong has repeatedly made suggestions to the ministry (but) they ignored the shortage of teachers and its negative impact.
“It is disappointing to see the interests of our students are being disregarded,” the group said in its 2024 report on issues affecting Chinese schools.
From the information it collected, Jiao Zong said there was never a shortage of applicants but many hopefuls were turned down for teacher training.
The group urged the ministry to be more transparent on the number of intakes for teacher training while allocating more slots for such programmes to help fill the vacancies at Chinese schools.
As a temporary measure, the group urged the ministry to allocate funds to schools for hiring part-time teachers.
> The daily also reported that Taiwanese-American singer Wilber Pan, who has struggled with his weight for years, showed off his latest workout success to his fans.
The 44-year-old shared a photo of him wearing a black tank top and revealing his toned arms on social media recently.
“I look like that even without training. How much better would I look if I had trained?” Pan said in the caption.
Some fans did not believe him, suspecting that the picture was edited, while many others said they were happy to see their idol regain the “healthy look”.
Pan had said before that his love for food had caused his weight to skyrocket to 93kg at one point.
The above articles are compiled from the vernacular newspapers (Bahasa Malaysia, Chinese and Tamil dailies). As such, stories are grouped according to the respective language/medium. Where a paragraph begins with a >, it denotes a separate news item.
