Education in Sarawak: an Outsider Looking In (or Why I Quit my Job)

This article originally appeared on the LoyarBurok website on 10 August 2012.

It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education – Albert Einstein

It’s the superficial differences you notice first, of course. Sarawakian schools are better landscaped; British schools are better resourced. British schools have a greater sense of structure; Sarawakian schools have a greater sense of community. There are superficial similarities, too – it seems that teachers all over the world have parallel concerns about government interference and volumes of paperwork. But after 18 months mentoring English teachers here in Sarawak under the new KSSR curriculum, I hope I’ve started to get (ever so) slightly under the skin of the primary education system here, and as an outsider looking in, this is what I’ve learnt about…

…classroom pedagogy

KSSR classrooms are pedagogically chaotic. Sadly that is not to say that teachers are reflectively experimenting with different approaches, but that nobody seems to know what to do for the best with the incoherent textbooks and conflicting advice foisted upon them since January last year.

The KSSR was intended to help teachers move away from chalking-and-talking by introducing contemporary methodologies such as synthetic phonics and communicative language teaching, but teachers were given no training and the textbook authors often seem as confused as the teachers. My favourite Year Two speaking activity reads, bafflingly:

‘A chicken gives us meat and eggs. Talk about camels and ostriches.’

Having a ‘native speaker’ (many of us are native-level rather than native speakers but the assumption endures) in their classrooms has barely helped my mentees to untangle the mess of the KSSR. How can it? Teachers are being asked to embrace a 180-degree culture change by spending two to three hours a week with a mad foreigner banging on about group work. What I’ve actually done for the last year and a half is deliver a piecemeal CELTA course in an attempt to compensate for the lack of theoretical foundations laid down by the MoE – but intensive four-week CELTAs (or their equivalent) could and should have been delivered by qualified local tutors before the KSSR was rolled out. That way, I might have been more of a mentor than an instructor. It’s a shame.

It’s also a shame that those in power don’t recognise that constantly using teachers as political guinea pigs makes huge dents in morale. Which leads me to…

...motivation

I’ve met some fantastically hard-working teachers in Sarawak who take their professional development seriously and who really care what happens to their charges. I’ve also met some unpardonably poor ones who’ve long since lost the will to teach, who arrive late to class or not at all, who never plan lessons and whose classroom management skills extend only to wielding (and occasionally using) a cane.

Cane aside – corporal punishment in state schools has been illegal in the UK since 1987 – I wouldn’t suggest for a second that British teachers don’t also fall into these two camps, and many in between. The difference in Sarawak seems to be that, once you’ve entered the teaching profession, it’s almost impossible to be dismissed. Incompetent teachers might receive verbal or written warnings, or be unhelpfully shunted to another school, but fired? No. In rural areas especially, legends of sacked teachers and petrol bombs abound, so perhaps it’s not surprising that the system is clogged with poorly-performing staff who do nothing to merit their salaries. But education reform is not possible without a workforce of committed educators.

Children shouldn’t move through any school system encountering just a handful of dedicated, capable teachers. The best I’ve worked with, here and in other countries, have been intrinsically motivated. They (we) enjoy their (our) work and see the value of it. Carrots such as bonuses, and sticks such as unpaid suspension of duties, are often rubbished as ineffective, short-term solutions to a lack of employee motivation, but in this context the absence of sticks is disastrous.

Let those who are jaded (for nobody could blame you), those who would rather be somewhere else, be somewhere else. And let those who can, teach.

…testing

From the moment you enter a school and see the huge display board counting down the days to the UPSR examination, it’s clear that education in Sarawak is driven by testing. Sadly, this drive swiftly and routinely breaks down the natural inquisitiveness that new pupils and new teachers bring to the classroom, and without it barely any real learning can take place. Teachers say; pupils repeat. Teachers write; pupils copy. Scoring highly on the UPSR English paper requires very little in the way of understanding.

Although the MoE has wisely recommended (rather than mandated…or has it? A definitive answer is hard to find) that testing should be abolished under the KSSR and replaced with continuous assessment, this is not happening. Why? In addition to the lack of ministerial clarity on the subject, the data entry requirements of the fledgling continuous assessment system are arduous, and at present there’s a disconnect between the communicative focus of the KSSR and the grammatical focus of the UPSR. There also seems to exist amongst headteachers an unshakeable belief that parents will not accept any means of progress testing other than, well, tests.

The UK is hardly more sensible on this front, with children sitting standardised tests at four ‘Key Stages’ during their school careers (at ages seven, 11, 14 and 16). Finland, however, widely accepted as having one of the most successful education systems in the world and from whom many of the KSSR’s principles were appropriated, does not test its students at all until the end of their final year of secondary school. Until practice follows policy here in Sarawak, children continue to be force-fed information they can parrot but not manipulate.

Another delivery of 1Malaysia chocolate milk

…the broader learning culture

The behaviour we expect from children must be modelled by the adults around them. We expect children to read, yet a 2012 straw poll of teachers in the Padawan district (where I’ve been working) revealed that, in the last year, only one person of 30 had read a whole book for pleasure themselves and only two had read stories to their kids. National statistics suggest that the average Malaysian reads just two books per year.

We also expect children to develop critical thinking skills, yet schools offer scant opportunities for them to do so. The hidden curriculum of the Sarawakian education system teaches pupils over and over again that unquestioning adherence to hierarchy – being silent or speaking (reciting) only at the command of someone higher up the food chain – is the single acceptable model of behaviour, and that deviation from this ‘norm’ is likely to land you in hot water.

On a related note, we expect parents to take an active interest in their children’s learning but insult their intelligence at every turn. Whilst a lack of parental engagement is the commonest reason offered for low student attainment, parents’ imagined beliefs are still allowed to dictate educational practice. Pupils must complete every exercise on every page of their workbooks, even those with nonsensical instructions and grammatical errors (there are several), otherwise parents will complain. Pupils must take monthly tests and have letter grades on their report cards otherwise parents will complain. Has there been a consultation? Are Sarawakian mothers and fathers really so immovable on these pedagogical matters in which they allegedly take no interest? It doesn’t make sense.

...the learning environment

Environment affects learning. It’s certainly not the most critical thing, but when you have a class of fifty in a crowded room with no soundproofing, a fan that only works between 10:45 and 11:10 on a Tuesday, nothing on the walls and holes in the floor, it’s much harder for learning to take place. Sarawakian school architecture seems not to have changed in the last thirty or forty years, although a growing body of research suggests that both teachers’ and students’ achievement is linked to the buildings in which they work. What to do?

Lack of finances is the oft-cited explanation for crumbling classrooms, but it appears that money can always be found for projects such as ours with which political points can be scored, and for the fountain of 1Malaysia chocolate milk which never seems to run dry. Cynicism aside, I’m not doubting the budgetary constraints at both government and school level, but a more even allocation of whatever meagre budget there is would go a long way towards improving the environment of most schools.

The real business of a school is teaching and learning and this is surely where money needs to be directed. Style is consistently prioritised over substance – in the cultivation of immaculate gardens while classrooms remain unfit for purpose, for example. Of course it’s not realistic to expect interactive whiteboards (or even whiteboards) in every room, but there ought to be sufficient time and money for staff to make attractive, educational decorations for their schools. Displaying pupils’ work, especially, is motivating and requires almost no effort on the part of teachers, but audible encouragement is needed from the top for teachers to spend less time on, say, testing, and more on creating places where kids are excited to learn.

…myself

Perhaps what you’ve learnt about me from this article is that I’m some neo-colonialist busybody who’d do well to go back to England and stop meddling in your education system. I’ve heard it before, and I’d struggle to argue with you at this point.

But the most significant thing I’d say I’ve learnt about myself from my experience here is that I’m a teacher first and a mentor, trainer, whatever else second. Being an outsider looking in to other people’s classrooms has fuelled my desire to get back inside one like nothing else in the past nine years, which is why I’ve left the project in spite of a deep-seated affection for Sarawak. I’d like to thank you for having me, apologise for the very little impact I’ve been able to make, and I hope for everyone’s sake that my successor is a vocation mentor with a fondness for chocolate milk.

Shut up! - encouraging learner autonomy through minimal instructions

Last week when I asked my Twitter PLN for tips on giving instructions, the eternally useful Kevin Stein (@kevchanwow) quickly replied:

‘Not to sound glib, but no instructions often works best.’

Interesting prospect. The reason I’d sought advice was that one of my mentees – I mentor ten primary English teachers in Malaysian Borneo – had mentioned after an observation that she was struggling to give clear instructions. We’d discussed the issue for a while and come up with the following ideas:

• KISS (a mnemonic from a previous workshop: Keep It Short & Simple!)
• break complex activities into stages and only give one instruction at a time
• draw simple pictures on the board
• use gesture or mime to accompany instructions
• provide a model of what you want the children to do
• choose the most common classroom instructions (e.g. Work in pairs), display them around the room and use them regularly and consistently
• write down and rehearse what you’re going to say if necessary

A mini-tambourine says more than you ever can

…but it hadn’t occurred to either of us that giving no instructions at all might be the way to go. When I first put Kevin’s suggestion to my mentee (who I will just call N), she looked completely confused. But as we discussed it more she realised that for certain activities, such as matching words and picture cards in groups, teacher instructions were unnecessary: the format was familiar and the task self-evident, provided that at least some of the words had been seen before.

To put this in a little more context: the fact that her class would not be fazed by a pile of picture and word cards is already a remarkable thing. The purpose of primary education in Malaysia seems to be for children to learn exactly what’s required to pass the horrific Year 6 UPSR examination and absolutely no more, and if you dropped into a random classroom you’d be likely to encounter one of two scenarios:

(1) children chorally repeating such everyday utterances as The tin is in the pit! ad nauseum; or

(2) children completing workbook exercises in silence while the teacher sits at the front desk marking or texting.

Games: not so much. Learner autonomy: NAUGHTY CHILDREN. That’s where we started from fourteen months ago. So to return to the point, N had agreed not to give instructions for part of her Year 3* class but when I arrived in school this morning she said she’d decided, as an experiment, not to speak at all. I must admit I was sceptical, but very intrigued to see what would happen.

The aim of the lesson was for the children to follow simple written instructions to make a bookmark. The class went like this:

• N maintained her normal routine of eliciting the day and date by writing a capital M on the board and looking expectantly at the children, who responded, ‘Today is Monday…[pause, more expectant looking]…the sixteenth of April’.

• As a quick warmer she prompted them to sing a song she’d taught them last week by doing the action that accompanied the first line of the song.

• She picked up her textbook, turned to the page with the instructions for making a bookmark and held it up for the children to see. They opened their books to the same page. At this point some of them stopped looking at N and started trying to read the book, and she got their attention again by waving a mini-tambourine.

• She called them to the front and showed them some word cards. Put together, the words formed five sentences explaining how to make a bookmark. They were very similar to the textbook instructions, but slightly simplified and with sequence words added. N spread out the words, picked out the card which said First and pretended to search for the next word. The pupils helped. After they had completed the first sentence together, she sent them back to their tables with a set of words each, and they built up all five sentences.

• She monitored the activity table by table, pointing to completed sentences and asking the children to read aloud what they had just constructed.

• When they had finished, N again got their attention with the tambourine. She mimed clearing up the word cards and closing the textbook, which the children did, then gave each group a worksheet. On it were pictures representing the five stages of making the bookmark, and the completed sentences they’d just made (in a jumbled order). Without being told what to do, the children started to write the sentences next to the correct diagrams.

• N monitored for spelling and punctuation, a nod to the requirements of the UPSR (in which marks are deducted for capital Ms written with rounded rather than pointed peaks. This is the kind of madness we’re dealing with). As each group finished the worksheet, they got one star on the reward board.

• N handed out card, scissors and ribbon to each pupil. She held up one group’s worksheet, pointed to the first instruction (First, draw a rectangle on the card) and then pointed at the card. When one or two children reached for their pencils and rulers, she gave them encouraging nods and smiles and withdrew. The other pupils quickly followed their lead.

• The vast majority of the students were able to follow the instructions to make their bookmarks. When there was doubt (punch a hole for example was not universally understood), the quicker kids explained to their friends what they had to do.

• Some of the pupils finished and brought their work to show N. She pointed at two children, pointed to a blank space on the back wall, and handed them a roll of double-sided tape. They immediately understood that they should display the work there, and other kids noticed what they were doing and started to take their work to the wall too.

• At the end of the class, groups whose members had all completed the task received another star on the reward chart.

• To elicit the routine lesson closer (in which the teacher thanks the class and they thank the teacher), N shook the tambourine, pointed at her watch and cupped her hand to her ear. The children dutifully replied, ‘Thank you, teacher! Thank you, Miss Laura!' :)

Standing on tables to display the finished bookmarks
(take that, Health and Safety!)

I was beaming and N was too. The children had worked together to complete the tasks without a single word from either of us.

The thing that impressed me the most was how willing my mentee had been to take a risk and relinquish control of the lesson. Here in Borneo there seems to be a belief that teachers whose classes are ‘noisy’ cannot control their pupils – that is to say, the noise of drilling, drilling and more drilling is fine, but the noise of children actually conversing is not – so to hear only the students’ voices during the lesson was quite thrilling. Drilling, thrilling: there’s a poem in there somewhere.

It wasn’t perfect. Although the children followed the instructions some of them drew rectangles pushing A5 size, which made me wonder whether they had understood what a bookmark was; we talked about maybe showing a bookmark at the start of the class and eliciting the word. We talked about possible activities for early finishers and about ways to indicate time limits for activities (I’d suggested drawing clocks with finishing times on them, but it didn’t really work). But mostly we talked about how exciting it was to take a leap of faith and for it to work so well. N is planning her next experiment.

* Year 3 pupils are nine years old. They’ve had five hours of ESL per week since Year 1, plus potentially some exposure to the language during one year of kindergarten.

The negative observer

It’s February 2011 and I’m sitting at the back of a sweaty classroom in Borneo, doing my first official observation of a Year 1 primary English teacher. The virgin white page of my new notebook is rapidly turning black, like a storm cloud coming over the sky, with scribbles such as:

No warmer

Lesson objectives?

Staging?

Teacher-centred

No variety

No meaning

Class management? CANE??

Aaaaaargh

Ffteen minutes felt like fifty, and this was fairly representative of all the lessons I saw that week.

The prospect of spending the next two and a half years as a mentor within this education system was overwhelming. Where to start? I was grateful we were under strict instructions not to give any feedback on initial observations except, ‘That was an interesting class. Thank you for having me’.

It’s now February 2012 and I’m sitting at the back of a classroom in Borneo, watching for the first time a new mentee who’s just joined the project. It’s still sweatier than a very sweaty thing, but my observation notes look totally different:

Kids loved song

Clear instructions

Nice flashcards

Good rapport

Check pron of /æ/

Phonics game in groups of 4?
Extension activities?

What’s happened in a year? Are the new teachers more competent than the old ones?  Have I tuned out the pedagogical idiosyncrasies of Sarawakian classrooms? Or have I realised that observation is not about me?

As Chris Ozog said in his excellent blog post ‘On being an observer’:

'Observations of teachers are not there to tell people how to teach, to take a teacher’s lesson to bits, to criticise, to push a certain pedagogical agenda or to show off the observer’s supposed greater experience and knowledge.'

How true that is, and how unable I was – occasionally still am – to practice what any sensible person would preach. It doesn’t matter what I would have done in their shoes. It matters whether the children enjoyed and learned from the lesson, and if they didn’t, whether it was because the teacher was missing any skills, knowledge or resources that I could help to provide.

Now, when I’m perspiring and scrawling and the teacher is nearly always trying their best in difficult circumstances, I try to start with a positive comment, even if my gut reaction is *lights flash, klaxon sounds* NO WARMER! NO WARMER! Like visualisation before a sports match or performance, it seems to trick my brain into looking at the lesson through a different filter. I don’t allow myself to write general criticisms either (Teacher-centred), but specific suggestions to improve activities that didn’t go so well (Phonics game in groups of 4?). And I watch the kids more than the teacher.

Kids settling down to class today

I was surprised and delighted last week to be approached by a mentee who’s been with me since the start of the project. She had, quite of her own volition, organised a peer observation programme for her school, and wanted me to join her on her first observation of a colleague. As we watched him, she leaned over to me and whispered, ‘This is terrible. So terrible’. I wondered whether all beginner observers fall into the same negativity trap I did, and was fascinated to see how our notes would compare when the class was over.

In short, her page was much like mine from a year ago. On one hand, I was really pleased that she could identify a lot of the issues we’ve been discussing over the last twelve months. On another, I worried that I had for too long provided a model of observation that was inappropriately vague and unduly critical. We talked about what we’d each written and constructed two columns of feedback, one containing examples of good practice and one with ideas to consider (she thought I was being too kind).

Unfortunately I wasn’t there to deliver the oral feedback with her so I’ve no idea whether, when it came to it, she was gentle or harsh or somewhere in between, and whether Mr A took it all on the chin or ran weeping into the mop cupboard. But observing her observing (to put it untidily) certainly forced me to look at my own practice as an observer, and what that communicates to the teachers who will take over my role when I’m gone. And as for effective oral feedback – well, that’s a whole separate post, isn’t it? :)

Teaching: like riding a bike?

Me (centre) with my ma and da, the last
time I tried to ride a bike, 2008

They say you never forget how to ride a bike once you've learned. Having spent my adolescence in rural Lincolnshire almost permanently glued to a saddle, but not riding again until my late twenties, I can vouch for this as a half-truth. Sure, I could still make it go, but I was as rusty as the handlebars: letting go to signal a left turn (never mind a right) made me nervous and wobbly, and my bum was numb for a good 24 hours after the ride.

I've been wondering lately whether teaching is one of those skills which, once learned, is never forgotten - or is it more of a 'use it or lose it' thing, like languages (by popular reputation, anyway)? I've been a trainer / mentor for over a year now and my only continued contact with English teaching is delivering joint primary classes with, and pronunciation workshops for, my mentees. And at the back of my mind I'm thinking: is this enough to keep my hand in? Am I going to be unemployable as a teacher when this project ends?

I'm enjoying lots of things about mentoring, but I never aspired to this. I started teaching because I love the English language in all its messy glory, I love trying to communicate ideas, and I love spending time with people from other countries who challenge my way of looking at the world. It still sometimes hurts, when people ask what I do, not to be able to answer, 'I'm a teacher', and the idea of the skills I spent seven years acquiring slowly draining out of my head, through my HAIR, is terrifying. Although maybe I should stop picturing it like that.

I know that my idea of what consitutes a lesson is becoming skewed. I arrived in Borneo with unfeasibly high expectations - 'let's try dogme!' rapidly became 'let's try pronouncing dog correctly!' - and things that horrified me at the start, like entire lessons spent inaccurately drilling ten unconnected words, no longer touch me (partly because I see them less often. I don't mean to say that my mentees are making no progress. But I'm still delighted, and whip out my phone to take pictures as proof, if I see productive pair or group work once a month). Is it only a matter of time before I internalise some of these bad habits? How can I make sure I don't forget how to do the job I love?

Connecting with other teachers via social media such as Twitter is extremely helpful. As is reading, and blogging, even if nobody reads what you write (like penning a vengeful letter to your ex, the therapy is just in getting it down). I've been thinking about volunteering for a while, and should probably stop making excuses and just find an unfortunate bunch of adults to coerce into sitting in an underventilated community hall with me whilst I remind myself how to present gerund vs infinitive. Any other ideas?