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LINUS programme for early learning
BY KANG SOON CHEN

Teaching aids: Flash cards are used to teach Bahasa Malaysia vocabulary to primary schoolchildren.

LITERACY and numeracy lay the foundation for learning in primary education
and beyond.
Reading, writing, arithmetic are implicit in the basic right to education.
Without these abilities, it is nearly impossible for students to attain higher
education and function in the modern society. However, statistics showed that
a sizeable student population in Malaysia are still ill-equipped with basic
literacy and numeracy skills.
In 2008, 54,000 Year One pupils identified with low literary skills were enrolled
in the Early Intervention Reading and Writing Class (KIA2M) while 117,000
Year Four pupils without basic numeracy skills were on the 3R Remedial
Programme (Protim).
Under the Government Transformation Programme, the Education National
Key Results Area (NKRA) aims to eradicate the dropout problem caused by
students inability to cope with mainstream education.
In 2008 alone, 31,939 students dropped out from school at both the primary
and secondary levels.
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The Literacy and Numeracy Screening (LINUS) programme is aimed at
ensuring that all Malaysian children acquire basic literacy and numeracy skills
after three years of mainstream primary education.
The Education NKRA has set a 100% literacy and numeracy target for all Year
Three pupils in Malaysia.
By basic literacy skills, the children are expected to have the ability to read,
write and understand words, simple and complex sentences (using
conjunctions) in Bahasa Malaysia and apply such knowledge in learning and
everyday communication.
For basic numeracy, the children must be able to read, write, count and
arrange (in order) whole numbers from one till 1,000 by Year Three.
They are also expected to demonstrate the ability to solve basic mathematical
operations, apply mathematical skills and knowledge in everyday activities
involving time, currencies and measurements.
Unlike previous efforts to address the numeracy and literacy problems, LINUS
focuses on early intervention in the early primary years before the pupils enter
Year Four.
Previous programmes either only focused on literacy skills (KIA2M) or
conducted much later between Year Four to Six (Protim).
LINUS is different from special education in that it is a remedial programme
which conducts screenings of Year One pupil in March every year to identify
pupils who are weak in literacy and numeracy skills.
Literacy and numeracy screenings are conducted by the school teachers in
March, June and September every year. The instruments with 12 constructs
are prepared by the Malaysian Examinations Syndicate and passed on to the
district education offices to be distributed to schools.
There are two parts to the screening written and oral.
The screening can be conducted in class by the teacher any time within the
stipulated timeframe.
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As this is a screening as opposed to a test, teachers are allowed to provide
guidance to the students by rewording the questions and giving examples.
Pupils who fail the screening test will be enrolled in remedial classes with 10
periods per week for literacy remedial and seven periods per week for
numeracy remedial.
Pupils who do not pass the construct 1 and 2 are classified as LINUS Tegar
(hardcore) and required to attend remedial classes.
The performance of the pupils enrolled in the LINUS program so far has been
encouraging.
The first cohort of 446,332 pupils who were enrolled in the programme in 2010
achieved 99% in their reading and writing test for their eighth screening
conducted in June this year, compared to the average score of below 50% in
the first screening test.
The pupils who are in Year Three now recorded the average score of 99.5% in
their screening test for numeracy skills.
Besides the earlier intervention factor, LINUS aims to reduce pupil-remedial
teacher ratio from one teacher per school to one teacher for 15 pupils.
There is no doubt that pupils with learning difficulties such as dyslexia need
individual attention from teachers.
By reducing the pupil-teacher ratio, teachers can effectively monitor the
progress of each pupil.
Given the shortage of teachers who are experienced in teaching remedial
classes, close to 17,000 teachers were trained between November 2009 and
February 2010 to deliver the new literacy and numeracy modules under the
LINUS programme.
Also, initiatives are put in place to upskill remedial teachers including the
collaboration with the Singapore-based College of Allied Educators to train
300 remedial teachers in a year-long programme starting from this November.
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The public-private partnership in the upskilling of remedial teachers is a step
forward in the objectives of the LINUS programme.
The remedial teachers are given a challenging task to ensure that pupils in the
LINUS programme master the required skills within three years.
It is important that they keep themselves updated to the new methods in
handling children with learning difficulties.
The main aim of the training programme is to introduce the teachers to the
differentiated pedagogical skills for pupils with learning disabilities and
techniques to identify pupils with special needs and learning difficulties.
For the first phase of training, teachers are selected from states with a high
number of LINUS Tegar pupils, primarily Sabah, Terengganu, Kelantan,
Sarawak, Perak, Kuala Lumpur, Putrajaya, Labuan and Negri Sembilan.