CfBT Education Trust

commentary on the Malaysian Education Blueprint

2013-2025

CfBT Education Trust commentary on the Malaysian Education Blueprint 2013-2025

About CfBT

44

Malaysia79
68
$1.6 billion USD
1968, with more than 44 years of global education consultancy experience
and a presence in Malaysia since 1979

Founded in

$1.6 billion USD of government, donor funded and Corporate

15,000

Delivery of more than

Social Responsibility (CSR) Education Programmes in the last decade

not-for-profit
More than

2,000 employees worldwide, supported by a global network of over 15,000

trusted associates and partners, drawn from the very best education thinkers and leaders
We are

not-for-profit. We deliver cost-effective solutions. We do this because we want to

$2 million

make a difference.

Each year we reinvest up to

60

$2 million USD of our surplus into world-class education

research, which we disseminate freely to inform education practice and policy.

Balanced Scorecard

More than

60 current global assignments provide educational consultancy

and hands-on delivery in the UK, the Middle East, Africa, India and South East Asia.

education

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We employ

and

PRINCE2 providing strategic

consultancy and hands-on delivery worldwide, with a particular focus on the UK, Middle East
and North Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa and Asia.
Our single focus is

education.

CfBT Education Trust commentary on the Malaysian Education Blueprint 2013-2025

Contents
Foreword 2
Report Authors

Delivering the Roadmap

CfBT Commentary and Recommendations

Shift 1: Provide equal access to quality education of an international standard

Shift 2: Ensure every child is proficient in Bahasa Malaysia and English language

12

Shift 3: Develop values-driven Malaysians

14

Shift 4: Transform teaching into the profession of choice

16

Shift 5: Ensure high-performing school leaders in every school

20

Shift 6: Empower JPNs, PPDs, and schools to customise solutions based on need

22

Shift 7: Leverage ICT to scale up quality learning across Malaysia

25

Shift 8: Transform Ministry delivery capabilities and capacity

26

Shift 9: Partner with parents, community, and private sector at scale

28

Shift 11: Increase transparency for direct public accountability

30

CfBT Education Trust commentary on the Malaysian Education Blueprint 2013-2025

Foreword
The Malaysia Education Blueprint 2013-2025 presents an important and realistic analysis of the
strengths and areas for development of the national education system. It also outlines a bold and
radical transformation trajectory.
CfBT endorses the fundamental analysis of the Blueprint: it clearly identifies the most high-leverage
initiatives to bring about sustained education improvement.

Sir Jim Rose CBE, FRSA,

Doctor of Laws

Successful reform depends upon the concentration of effort on what really matters. The worlds most
successful education systems have achieved their quantum leaps by focusing on a small number of
high-impact initiatives and implementing them effectively.
However, the Ministry of Education must guard against implementing reform initiatives in too many
parts of the education system simultaneously, which could result in transformation fatigue.
In this commentary document, we draw on CfBTs 44-year track record of reforming national
education systems in more than 80 countries to make a number of recommendations that will help
to ensure effective implementation of the Blueprint.
We also outline how CfBT can support the Ministry in this exciting transformation journey.

Sir Jim Rose CBE, FRSA, Doctor of Laws

Chair CfBT Research Committee
Formerly Her Majestys Inspector and Director of Inspection for
Englands Office for Standards in Education (OFSTED)

CfBT Education Trust commentary on the Malaysian Education Blueprint 2013-2025

Report Authors
Tony McAleavy, Education Director
Tony is CfBTs Education Director, with corporate oversight of the educational impact of all
our activities. Tony also has responsibility for corporate business development and advises
the Trustees on CfBTs public domain research programme. He has played a major part in
the development of our international consultancy practice, and he has worked particularly
extensively on our growing portfolio of education reform projects in the Middle East.

Tony McAleavy,
Education Director

Prior to joining CfBT, Tony held senior school and local authority posts in England. He has
published extensively on the subject of school history teaching and has an MA in Modern
History from St Johns College, University of Oxford.

Dr Arran Hamilton, Business Development Director, Asia

Arran is responsible for business growth in Asia. His most recent client-side engagement
was as lead consultant to Khazanah Nasional and Yayasan AMIR, on Malaysias Trust School
Programme.

Dr Arran Hamilton,
Business Development
Director, Asia

Arran has also designed and led a number of national education reform initiatives in the
UK for a range of clients including the Department for Education, the Department for Work
and Pensions, the Qualifications and Curriculum Development Authority, the Training and
Development Agency for Schools and the Quality Improvement Agency. Prior to this, Arran
led Cambridge Assessments teacher training arm in the UK. He has also held teaching and
research positions at Warwick University.

Michael Latham, Regional Director, South Asia

Michael has worked for CfBT Education Trust since 1982. He is a world leader in Public Private
Partnerships in Education. He has presented papers and conducted training on behalf of the
United Nations Institute for Training and Research, the Institute for Development Studies, the
World Bank Institute and Harvard University.

Michael Latham,
Regional Director, South Asia

Michael has recently commenced work on the Asian Development Banks Development
Partnership Program for South Asia Innovative Strategies for Accelerated Human Resource
Development in Asia, where one of the main outcomes is to develop a guideline that will focus
on identifying good practices in PPP application in the education sector in each participating
country, Asia, and other regions of the world that are relevant to South Asia.

CfBT Education Trust commentary on the Malaysian Education Blueprint 2013-2025

Delivering the Roadmap

The Malaysian Education Blueprint is a complex and multi-faceted proposition with 39 distinct headline initiatives
each with clear and overlapping interdependencies. The biggest risk is in detailed implementation.

The Ministry of Education (MOE) already recognises the implementation or execution risk and plans to establish
an Education Delivery Unit (EDU) to oversee effective delivery of the roadmap. Based on our experience and direct
involvement with similar education reform initiatives in a range of contrasting countries for example the Philippines,
Cambodia, Somalia, Rwanda and the UK the composition, expertise and level of authority of the Education Delivery
Unit will make or break these reforms.

CfBT recommendations:
1) 
The EDU must have teeth. It must be access all areas, so that it is able to scrutinise the plans, products,
implementation pilots and outcome data of the implementing divisions and report on progress. Above all, it should
have the authority to circumnavigate the chain of command to intervene directly when delivery is at risk.
2) 
The MOE staff performance management system must be leveraged fully to incentivise compliance by all. From
2013, the performance objectives of the top 200 MOE staff should be harmonized so that they are fully incentivised to
deliver the Blueprint. Objectives should be both input and output based and ideally the Education Delivery Unit should
have veto over whether the top 200 have achieved their respective objectives. This will help to ensure that everyone is
marching in the same direction.
3) 
The EDU should be underpinned with project management expertise. Whilst having quality educational expertise
at the centre of the EDU is essential, it must be complemented by professional PRINCE2/APM or equivalent qualified
and industry experienced project managers. These professional project managers would work hand-in-hand
with educationalists to develop programme and project plans to carefully link and sequence the 39 programmes,
implement product-based planning, oversee work packages and monitor and mitigate risk.

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4) An International Education Think Tank should be established to support the EDU which is
benchmarked against international standards and undergoes continuous quality improvement
throughout piloting and full implementation. The role of the Education Think Tank would be to provide
world-class technical assistance in the design and development of the full range of education
reforms (Finance, Legal, HR, Decentralisation, School Improvement, Teacher Training, Curriculum
Development etc) and act as an education advisory one-stop-shop.

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CfBT recommendations in action

CfBT has supported similar think tanks worldwide:

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AUSTRALIA: Management of the AUSAID

Education Resource Facility (ERF)

UK: DFID Professional Evidence and Applied

Knowledge Services (PEAKS)

CfBT provides consultancy support and programme

design services to support the effective delivery of
AusAID education development programs in Asia.
We do this by supplying rapid and reliable access
to technical advice, research and international
best practice in education development assistance
and education reform. This is used by AUSAID to
plan its multi-billion $AUS education assistance
programme.

CfBT operates as part of a consortium to act

as a one-stop-shop to the UK Department for
International Development (DFID). We provide
DFID with consultancy support, technical advice,
programme design and international benchmarking
services for its multi-billion GBP education aid
programme. In the last six months we have
undertaken multiple education technical assistance
projects in North and Sub-Saharan Africa.

CfBT Commentary and Recommendations

In the following sections, we provide a commentary on the main initiatives related to Shifts 19 and 11,
and where appropriate, outline how we can support MOE in effective delivery.

CfBT Education Trust commentary on the Malaysian Education Blueprint 2013-2025

Shift 1: Provide equal access to quality

education of an international standard
Launch new Secondary School Standard Curriculum or Kurikulum Standard Sekolah Menengah (KSSM)
and revised Primary School Standard Curriculum or Kurikulum Standard Sekolah Rendah (KSSR) in 2017.
The school curriculum at both primary and secondary levels will be revised to embed a balanced set of
knowledge and skills such as creative thinking, innovation, problem solving, and leadership.

CfBT commentary:
CfBT applauds MOEs drive towards enhancing the curriculum, so that it emphasises the higher-order thinking skills
required in the 21st century economy. We believe that the new curriculum standards compare favourably with the
curricula deployed by the worlds highest-performing systems. However, anecdotal evidence from the phased
implementation of KSSR, suggests that many of the primary school teachers currently delivering this new curriculum
in Standard 1 and Standard 2 need more support in getting to grips with school-based assessment, the use of active
learning pedagogies and the promotion of higher-order thinking skills.

CfBT recommends:
1) The development of a standardised and linked scheme of work, lesson plans and student materials for all core
subjects which contain a range of differentiated and student-centred activities. These should be used in the early
stages of transition to the new curricula to scaffold teaching practice and in the latter stages of implementation as a
foundation for teachers to innovate.
2) A national training programme to equip teachers to deliver the new curriculum effectively spearheaded by the
proposed School Improvement Partners. This should focus on: a) showing teachers how to use the standardised
scheme of work and lesson plans; and b) modelling the active learning pedagogies promoted in the lesson plans.
3) The creation of a national bank of model assessment materials, so that schools have reference materials to adapt for
the development of contextualised school-based assessment. Ideally these should also be linked to the national bank
of lesson plans.
4) Training in assessment and moderation, so that teachers understand how to apply the rubrics in the long term
culminating in an Institute of Assessors for Malaysia with chartered status for teachers who opt to become
assessment experts.
5) A review of the current banding of criterion-referenced grade descriptors for KSSR and KSSM student-based
assessment. Significant anecdotal evidence shows that teachers have found that the descriptors are too open to
interpretation, which raises the issue of inter-rater reliability in assessment.

CfBT Education Trust commentary on the Malaysian Education Blueprint 2013-2025

Education for gifted students. As Malaysia becomes a developed economy, grooming top talent will
become increasingly important towards achieving our growth objectives. Competitive Asian economies,
such as Hong Kong, Singapore, and South Korea, employ education for gifted students as a driver of
human capital development and national innovation. These countries provide an education for gifted
children through a two-step process. Firstly, the governments identify gifted students, through measures
of aptitude, as well as mathematics and verbal achievement scores. Next, the students are admitted into
specialised programmes at the preschool, primary, and secondary levels.

CfBT commentary:
The model of gifted education outlined in the blueprint may be too narrowly focused as it appears to focus on
identifying a minority of students and providing them with targeted support to accelerate their progress through the
schooling system. We endorse the view of the eminent Stanford University psychologist, Professor Dweck, that the brain
is like a muscle that can grow through use and ability is not fixed at birth. The majority of contemporary educational
psychologists agree with Professor Dweck and view ability as being made up of a number of factors including task
commitment, creativity and above-average ability within a framework of multiple intelligences. CfBT is currently
undertaking research, along with the University of Oxford, into lessons from brain science for school pedagogy, and our
findings confirm this emphasis on the need to develop multiple intelligences and avoid the early labelling of students.
Meeting the needs of gifted and talented students should, therefore, be about building on good general provision,
not about providing something entirely different. Therefore, MOE could consider a more inclusive notion of gifted and
talented where all teachers are encouraged to use the full range of active learning pedagogies and deploy differentiated
teaching techniques that are designed to nurture the multiple intelligences of their learners.
However, we recognise that it will take time to transform the teaching approach of every teacher so that they include
more complex and differentiated learning outcomes and questioning to meet the needs of their higher-ability students.
We therefore understand why MOE might consider a standalone approach to gifted and talented provision in the short
term. However, by Wave 3 of the blueprint we strongly recommend the implementation of a more integrated approach to
gifted and talented provision.

CfBT Education Trust commentary on the Malaysian Education Blueprint 2013-2025

Revamp national examinations and school-based assessments to gradually increase percentage of

questions that test higher-order thinking. By 2016, higher-order thinking questions will make up 80% of
questions for UPSR, 80% of the Form 3 central assessment, 75% of the questions for SPM core subjects
and 50% of the questions for SPM elective subjects.

CfBT commentary:
This is a good move. In our global experience, assessment generally drives teaching: teachers are generally measured
on their students performance in examinations and are therefore generally incentivised to teach to the test.
However, the move to assessment that tests higher-order thinking skills may result in a dip in student examination
performance in the short term. This is because teachers may not have the skills to develop the higher-order thinking skills
in their students that are required for examination success.

CfBT recommends:
The development of a stand-alone Thinking Skills Curriculum that is delivered and assessed as a discrete package.
Many of the worlds leading education systems have found this to be a useful stepping-stone to embedding thinking
skills across the entire curriculum. This is because, logistically, it is easier to train 10,000 thinking skills specialist teachers
to deliver a generic programme and for them to support students to apply this to the other curriculum areas, than it is to
retrain 400,000 teachers to embed thinking skills within their delivery from day one.

CfBT Education Trust commentary on the Malaysian Education Blueprint 2013-2025

Raise quality of all preschools and encourage universal enrolment by 2020. Every child aged 5+ will be
enrolled in a registered preschool, be it public or private. Low-income families that would otherwise not
be able to afford preschool will receive need-based financial support from the Ministry. All preschools
will follow a set of national quality standards, including a provision that every preschool teacher has a
minimum diploma qualification. These schools will also be inspected regularly by the Ministry or the Early
Childhood Care and Education Council of Malaysia to ensure that they meet minimum standards.

CfBT commentary:
The Malaysian preschool landscape is a complex one, with both the private sector and several government agencies
operating institutions. The number of preschools, particularly those operated by the private sector, is also growing as a
direct consequence of the Economic Transformation Programme. The projected growth in pre-school enrolment from 2010
to 2020 is almost 200%, with more than 850,000 preschool students by 2020. Anecdotally, we are also aware of a significant
number of preschools that do not appear within the figures, because they are operating unofficially, without licence.

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We agree that quality is paramount and that regular inspection must be used as a mechanism to
achieve this. However, inspecting the entire preschool estate on a two-year basis and maintaining the
infrastructure to investigate ad hoc complaints is a mammoth undertaking. Where other education systems
have sought to rapidly ramp up their inspection provision they have turned to public-private partnerships
(PPP) as a way of doing this quickly. In some cases this has centred on organisations with expertise on
inspections, such as CfBT, providing consultancy on how to establish these services effectively and in
line with ISO-quality guidelines. In other cases, governments have used PPP as a mechanism to transfer
responsibility for the delivery of inspection services to the private or voluntary sector.

CfBT recommends:
CfBT strongly recommends that MOE considers both of these options for inspection.

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Consultancy

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CfBT has delivered both consultancy and direct delivery of inspection support worldwide:

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Direct delivery

UNITED ARAB EMIRATES: School

evaluations consultancy and local
capacity-building support to the
Ministry of Education

JAMAICA: Designing a new national

approach to school inspection

THAILAND: Inspections training for

the Office for National Education
Standards and Quality Assessment

OFSTED INSPECTIONS CONTRACT

Ofsted (Office for Standards in Education, Childrens
Services and Skills) oversees education institution
inspections in England for the UK government.
CfBT has sole responsibility for delivering Ofsted
inspection services in schools and pre-schools in
the north of England and has worked for Ofsted
since 1993.
With a contracted workforce of more than 700 CfBT
inspectors, we are responsible for inspecting more
than 7,000 kindergartens, schools, colleges and
vocational training centres in the north of England.
More than 3,000 CfBT inspections are undertaken
each year and CfBT has helped Ofsted achieve
savings and greater value for money.

INTERNATIONAL SCHOOLS QUALITY MARK (ISQM):

a CfBT-owned inspection and accreditation system
for international schools in the Middle East, Africa
and Asia

10

CfBT North of England

Inspection Zone

CfBT Education Trust commentary on the Malaysian Education Blueprint 2013-2025

Move from 6 to 11 years of compulsory schooling, starting at age 6+, supported by targeted retention
programmes and job-ready vocational training. By 2020, every student will leave formal schooling
with a minimum SPM or equivalent vocational qualification. This means that compulsory schooling will
increase from 6 to 11 years, and that approximately 5%, 10%, and 20% more students will be enrolled
at the primary, lower, and upper secondary levels respectively (based on 2011 enrolment numbers for
public and private schools). Students who are at risk of dropping out will be supported through a variety
of retention initiatives, from remedial coaching to parent and student counselling. Students will also be
able to choose from a variety of education pathways based on their specific interests and potential.
This includes expanded vocational streams that offer industry-recognised qualifications and hands-on
practicum opportunities, through close partnerships with the private sector.

CfBT commentary:
A recent World Bank / CfBT research report1 concluded that there is little evidence to show that vocational studies lead to
better job prospects. Vocational training while at school does not guarantee that students will acquire job-relevant skills,
or useful integration into the labour market. In sum this approach has been proven to involve higher costs and lower
benefits, and to induce higher inequality than traditional secondary academic schooling.
In addition, the same research shows that students following vocational courses score poorly in subjects such as reading
and mathematics, which arguably are precisely the skills that employers are demanding. Another issue is that students
streamed into vocational studies are sometimes not allowed to switch later onto another track, thus limiting their future
opportunities and reducing their options for post-secondary schooling. The international evidence suggests that the
earlier students get into the vocational track, the more limited their opportunities are for entering tertiary education.
In several high-performing countries, including Korea, evidence shows that extending comprehensive, non-tracked
schooling not only leads to significant improvements in the learning outcomes of those students who would otherwise
have been enrolled in vocational secondary programmes, but also enables overall learning outcomes to improve.
Poland, for example, has improved its performance in international tests by pushing back the age at which students
begin a vocational track.

CfBT recommends:
For the reasons stated above, CfBT does not recommend the implementation of job-ready vocational training
programmes in Malaysian schools. Instead, we advocate, in all schools, a more project-based approach to teaching the
national curriculum that motivates student learning by drawing on real-world case studies and simulations.

Patrinos, H. (ed.), Strengthening Education Quality in East Asia: SABER report (World Bank, 2012)

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CfBT Education Trust commentary on the Malaysian Education Blueprint 2013-2025

Shift 2: Ensure every child is proficient in

Bahasa Malaysia and English language
Upskill English teachers and expand opportunities for greater exposure to the language. Every student
will be taught English by a teacher who is proficient according to international standards. This will
be achieved by having all 70,000 English teachers pass the Cambridge Placement Test (CPT) within
two years. Teachers who have yet to meet this standard will receive intensive upskilling. Beyond that,
students will have greater exposure to the language, for example via an expanded, compulsory English
Literature module at the secondary level. International research indicates that more exposure time than
the current 15-20% is required for students to achieve operational proficiency.

CfBT commentary:
In our 44-year experience of delivering English language upskilling programmes in the Middle East, Africa and Asia,
we have found that there is no simplistic relationship between a teachers grasp of English and their effectiveness as
an English teacher. The best English language teachers have, above all, strong pedagogic skills, although they must
of course have a reasonable proficiency in English. Without pedagogical skill it is impossible to be an effective teacher
whatever the level of subject knowledge.
At the same time, we recognise the need to ensure that English teachers actually have a reasonable command of English
and, where they do not, countermeasures should be implemented in order to enhance their English skills.

CfBT recommends:
1) Our view, based on several decades of experience, is that the Cambridge Placement Test (CPT) should be used with
caution for assessing English Language competency. This is because:

It is possible to achieve a good test score with an implicit rather than explicit understanding of English grammar
rules. However, an explicit understanding is a pre-requisite to teach English effectively at the highest levels.

The CPT assesses teachers reading and writing skills in English. However, in their classroom activity, teachers
are more likely to be using their speaking and listening skills. This means that it is possible that some teachers
will pass the test who are unconfident in their speaking skills and that others who speak and listen effectively in a
classroom setting will fail the test, because their written comprehension is poorer.

2) Based on our current experience of supporting English Language teaching in Malaysian schools (funded by FELDA,
Hap Seng and HSBC), we strongly recommend that the online CPT should be triangulated with lesson observations
data to develop a more holistic view of Malaysian English teachers classroom practice.
3) We also recommend that a tiered and blended programme for upskilling the nations English teachers is implemented. The
most basic tiers of this programme should centre on language comprehension (for those teachers who have not met the
CPT threshold standard) and the higher tiers should focus on effective pedagogy and could also include preparation for the
Cambridge ICELT Certification. This would mean that every English teacher would receive some form of support tailored to
their specific needs. For example, a teacher who was weak on both mastery of English and pedagogy would be expected
to work through a tiered programme that addressed both these elements. Whereas a teacher judged to have stronger
pedagogy but weaker English would receive a support programme focused on language up-skilling which would also
contribute to an improvement of language skills.

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CfBT Education Trust commentary on the Malaysian Education Blueprint 2013-2025

International evidence suggests that English up-skilling programmes work best when native English speakers act as
trainers. This is simply because they already have complete mastery of the language and are therefore able to focus
all of their energies on effective pedagogy.
4) We believe that English language teacher up-skilling is an ideal environment for a Public-Private
Partnership with the private/voluntary sector recruiting, training, managing, quality-assuring and
acting as a cultural buffer to a team of native English-speaking teacher trainers. In our experience,
this model works best when:

there are multiple providers, each responsible for a different region this promotes competition,
value-for-money and spreads operational delivery risk;

the PPP contract is both inputs and outputs based this ensures that the providers are incentivised
to achieve results;

teachers are incentivised to engage with the programme through a mixture of career
enhancement benefits and sanctions for non-performance.

5) We recommend that the MOE investigate the possibility of piloting a bilingual BI-BM curriculum for
students.
CfBT has already successfully implemented this type of curriculum in Brunei in pre-school
and Standard 1.

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BRUNEI: NATIONAL ENGLISH LANGUAGE PROGRAMME

CfBT is working in a unique and ground-breaking partnership with the Ministry of Education in Brunei
Darussalam. The project, which is the largest, longest-running and most successful of its kind in
the world, is designed to improve learner attainment in English language and build the capacity of
Bruneian teachers of English.
Brunei Cambridge O Level English Credit %

CfBT has over 300 staff in Brunei, with a 96% retention rate.
Internationally recognised credits in Cambridge O level English as First Language results have improved from
13% to 37% since 2006 (7% to 37% since 1996).

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CfBT Education Trust commentary on the Malaysian Education Blueprint 2013-2025

Shift 3: Develop values-driven Malaysians

Develop students holistically by reinforcing the requirement for every student to participate in 1 Sport, 1
Club, and 1 Uniformed Body. Co-curricular involvement provides students with opportunities to develop
their individual talents and interests outside of a formal classroom setting. Such activities also provide
excellent leadership opportunities for students. Every child will therefore still be expected to participate in
at least 1 sport, 1 club, and 1 uniformed body.

CfBT commentary:
Our intelligence suggests that there are many schools that do not meet the current co-curricular statutory requirements.
This means that more will need to be done to monitor compliance. The increased monitoring and support functions to
PPD, as envisaged in Shift 6, should assist in this process.
CfBT agrees that co-curricular activity is valuable in its own right especially in instilling the Modal Insan qualities.
However, it can be further leveraged if schools are enabled to look at ways to link the formal and co-curriculum areas
together, so that students can use the co-curriculum to model the concepts they are learning in the formal curriculum.
This blended approach, which removes the silos between the formal curriculum and co-curriculum, will result in deeper
learning. This is an approach that CfBT has supported at national level in England through an important programme
supporting Learning outside the Classroom.
The Blueprint strongly references the value of schools brokering partnerships with business and the community in
order to fully leverage delivery of co-curricular activities. CfBT strongly endorses this view we believe that business
and community engagement can be a powerful lever to improve the quality of the co-curriculum through sponsorship,
provision of skilled expertise and off-site visits. CfBT also believes that business and community stakeholders should
be leveraged for involvement in delivery of the formal curriculum too. Where children use real-life case studies provided
by local businesses, for example creating a mini company brochure in English for their BI class, reviewing a companys
balance sheets in their mathematics class or building a companys website in their IT class, they are more likely to
become engaged in their learning.

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CfBT Education Trust commentary on the Malaysian Education Blueprint 2013-2025

CfBT recommends:
Since brokering partnerships with business and the community can be a complex business, in
the short term we recommend that this takes place at PPD level rather than at individual school
level so that local businesses and community groups are approached by a single broker who
creates a district-wide menu and who also works across a range of schools with the PK KoKo
and PK1 to identify the menu items that would benefit each school.

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CfBT Education Trust commentary on the Malaysian Education Blueprint 2013-2025

Shift 4: Transform teaching into the

profession of choice
Raise the entry bar for teachers from 2013 to be amongst top 30% of graduates. In the future, only the
best candidates will be recruited as teachers.

CfBT commentary:
It is vital to ensure that the growing Teach for Malaysia programme is placed at the heart of this initiative. Its marketing
and promotional campaigns, if positioned appropriately, will help to boost the status of the teaching profession and
attract entrants from the top universities both international and local.

CfBT recommends:
1) Consider removing the restrictions on teachers moving back and forth between teaching and the private sector. This
policy shift will:

make the teaching profession more attractive to high-calibre applicants because they could accelerate their career
progression and skill base by moving back and forth between the government and commercial education sectors;

provide teachers with greater occupational currency they would know first-hand from working in industry the
transferable skills that employers are currently looking for.

2) Allow greater possibility for Public-Private Partnerships the types of PPP models envisaged in the Economic
Transformation Programme require skilled inputs from seasoned educationalists. At the moment, most of the
expertise resides in the Ministry and there is a limited reserve army of educational expertise. This necessitates the
procurement of expensive international expertise.

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CfBT Education Trust commentary on the Malaysian Education Blueprint 2013-2025

Upgrade the quality of continuing professional development (CPD) from 2013. Teachers will receive
greater support to help them achieve their full potential. When they enter the profession, teachers will
develop an individualised CPD programme with their supervisors. This CPD programme will include
common training requirements expected of all teachers, as well as electives that teachers can pursue
based on their own developmental needs. It will mostly be run at school, as school-based training has
proven to be the most effective form of CPD.

CfBT commentary:
International evidence suggests that this will ensure a higher quality of CPD provision, as training interventions are
targeted and contextualised to local needs. However, this will require the development and deployment of a PPD-based
team of experts focused on supporting newly qualified teachers (NQTs). Our understanding is that this will be part of the
role of the soon-to-be-appointed School Improvement Partners (SIPs). However, even at full-strength of 2,500, this only
equates to a 1:4 ratio of SIPs to schools. This may not be sufficient in the early stages of reform.

CfBT recommends:
The MOE should consider creating the role of Adjunct SIP these would be part-time school-based roles held by the
strongest teacher in each school. The role would receive a salary enhancement and a reduced teaching timetable and
Adjunct SIPs would support full SIPs in the delivery of training, lesson observations and peer mentoring albeit on a parttime basis.

Focus teachers on their core function of teaching from 2013. Teachers will enjoy a reduced administrative
burden, so that they can focus the majority of their time on their core function of teaching. This will
be achieved by streamlining and simplifying existing data collection and management processes.
Some administrative functions will also be moved to a centralised service centre or to a dedicated
administrative teacher at the school level.

CfBT commentary:
Malaysia already has one of the best student staff ratios in the world. Once the measures to reduce administrative
burden are implemented, there should be sufficient additional teaching hours to move to a co-teaching model where,
in some cases, two teachers deliver each class. This model allows for greater student support it also results in greater
peer collaboration amongst teachers, which should greatly increase the quality of teaching.

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CfBT Education Trust commentary on the Malaysian Education Blueprint 2013-2025

Implement competency and performance-based career progression by 2016. Teachers will be assessed
annually by their principals, with input potentially being provided by peers. This assessment will be done
using a new evaluation instrument that focuses on teachers ability to deliver effective instruction in and
out of the classroom.

CfBT commentary:
Industry-standard performance management frameworks have been a powerful enabler in other education systems
in encouraging a culture of responsibility and accountability and by implication in driving up standards. However, in
other international reform initiatives that CfBT has advised on, we have witnessed the development of world-class
performance management frameworks that have been poorly implemented because principals were reluctant to wield
them.
Our local intelligence suggests that this may be a risk in the Malaysian context and that the desire to avoid confrontation
may undermine objective assessment in some cases.

CfBT recommends:
1) The use of a norm-referenced scoring framework that requires principals to distribute a limited number of points
amongst their teaching staff. This logically means that someone has to be ranked first and someone last.
2) Implementation of an external moderation processes, where a sample of teachers is dual-or re-evaluated by SIPs, to
ensure that principals are consistently applying Standard Guru Malaysia or any successor competency framework.
3) That principals receive training from SIPs in the provision of constructive feedback to their teachers this would be of
value for both the staff appraisal process and the twice-yearly lesson observation.

Enhance pathways for teachers into leadership, master teaching and subject specialist roles by 2016.
Teachers will also be able to pursue attractive pathways based on their performance, potential and
interests. For example, they may wish to pursue a leadership role at the school, district, state, or federal
level.

CfBT commentary:
This model has successfully been deployed in Singapore and also in the UK via the Fast Track Teaching Programme that
CfBT delivered on behalf of the Department for Education. MOE could consider implementing a similar model to Fast
Track Teaching in Malaysia, that progresses teachers early in their careers through a battery of psychometric tests and
assessment centres, to identify their future leadership potential. Those with strong leadership traits would then be fasttracked and supported via coaching and industry placements.

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CfBT Education Trust commentary on the Malaysian Education Blueprint 2013-2025

Develop a peer-led culture of professional excellence and certification process by 2025. The Ministry will
focus on ensuring that all teachers fully utilise the flexibilities accorded to them over professional issues
related to curriculum timetabling and lesson organisation, pedagogical approaches and school-based
assessment. The Ministry will also facilitate teacher-driven CPD activities to enable teachers to mentor
one another, develop and disseminate best practices and hold each other accountable for meeting
professional standards.

CfBT commentary:
CfBT strongly recommends that the implementation date for this initiative is brought forward to the end of Wave 1 /
beginning of Wave 2. As previously highlighted, the new School Improvement Partners will need to leverage Adjunct SIPs,
if they are to have true impact across 10,000 schools. The logical sequencing of events is that no more than one year after
the recruitment and training of SIPs, they in turn begin the process of recruiting and training their Adjuncts.

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CfBT Education Trust commentary on the Malaysian Education Blueprint 2013-2025

Shift 5: Ensure high-performing

school leaders in every school
Enhance selection criteria and succession planning processes for principals from 2013. The Ministry will
move from a tenure-based selection criterion to one that is focused on the demonstration of leadership
competencies.

CfBT commentary:
CfBT wholeheartedly endorses this strategic thrust, especially as MOE envisages providing school leaders with significant
new autonomies by Wave 3. Other decentralisation and school-based management initiatives that have been recently
embarked on by some of Malaysias nearest neighbours have not been successful in the early stages, simply because
school and district leadership in these countries is not yet strong enough to wield the autonomies effectively.

CfBT recommends:
1) Use Teach for Malaysia as a conduit to attract the best applicants into the teaching profession its recruitment and
selection processes are world class.
2) Implement a rigorous Fast Track to Leadership programme that selects the best aspiring leaders from within the
system and puts them through a comprehensive programme of psychometric and assessment centre activities to see
if they have the right stuff.
3) Make the selection process steep, so that only the best are selected and that the number is proportional to the
anticipated number of principal vacancies rather than training many more aspirant principals than there are likely
vacancies available. This also means that the available training budget per aspirant principal will be higher, which
should translate into a greater quality and quantity of support.
4) Ensure that the training programme itself is robust that it offers immersion activities, executive coaching, structured
PK placements and ideally industry placements too, so that aspirant principals understand the management
practices employed in the commercial sectors.

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CfBT Education Trust commentary on the Malaysian Education Blueprint 2013-2025

Roll out a New Principal Career Package in waves from 2013 with greater support and sharper
accountability for improving student outcomes. As with teachers, principals will receive greater support
to help them achieve their full potential and will therefore be held more accountable for the delivery of
higher student outcomes.

CfBT commentary:
Outcome-based approaches to performance management operate within a dichotomy. On the one hand what gets
measured gets done but on the other hand not everything that counts can be counted. Significant thought must be given
to how these outcome measures are shaped. If they are based entirely on student examination results, for example,
there is the danger that principals will be incentivised to engage in drilling practices. Measures of performance must
be holistic focusing on the quality of leadership, teaching and learning, student well-being, parent and community
engagement as well as examination results. It should also include student and parent surveys and where possible be
validated by regular independent external inspection.

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CfBT Education Trust commentary on the Malaysian Education Blueprint 2013-2025

Shift 6: Empower JPNs, PPDs, and schools to

customise solutions based on need
Accelerate school improvement through systematic, district led programmes rolled-out across all states
by 2014. Building off the success of the GTP 1.0 School Improvement Programme, every District Education
Office or Pejabat Pelajaran Daerah (PPD) will be empowered to tailor the support provided to schools on
dimensions from student attendance through to principal and teacher deployment.

CfBT commentary:
Decentralisation has become a common and powerful theme in education reform in the last decade; the majority
of Malaysias neighbours are also making moves to disperse authority more widely and implement school-based
management approaches. The journey towards decentralisation in these countries has not always been smooth.
The two key barriers have been: 1) a lack of skilled leaders at the local level, who know how to deploy the new found
autonomies effectively; and 2) that district administrators and principals had spent their entire careers operating in
highly centralised systems, where they acted as ciphers. Therefore they were not culturally well disposed to direct
decision-making or being held accountable for outcomes.

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The process of empowering PPDs will take time and will require considerable support. Other education
systems have taken radical steps to give this process a turbo boost and have implemented public-private
partnerships that have made the private or voluntary sector accountable for the management of the least
well-performing PPDs. For example, this approach has been used to good effect in the UK to turn around a
number of underperforming district authorities, and CfBT commends this approach to MOE.

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CASE STUDY: CfBT SUPPORT OF EDUCATION SERVICES FOR LINCOLNSHIRE COUNTY COUNCIL
In September 2002, CfBT began a 15-year partnership with Lincolnshire County Council in the
UK. The main aim was to support the school improvement agenda in Lincolnshire schools. The
contract has now expanded and CfBT manages, on behalf of the local authority, the entire range
of education services for the Council.

QUICK FACTS
CfBT has responsibility and accountability for school improvement in 275 primary schools, 58 secondary
schools, 300+ kindergartens and over 100,000 students
We work with 10,000 teaching and non-teaching staff and directly manage a team of 425 advisors/officers and
back office staff. The Service operates to ISO 9001 processes.
We train and accredit 120 new teachers each year, in a programme graded Outstanding by Ofsted, and
support over 400 newly qualified teachers.
Lincolnshire is the only major rural education service in England to be rated Outstanding by Ofsted for three
consecutive years.

Allow greater school-based management and autonomy for schools that meet a minimum performance
criterion. In the future, all schools will be responsible for operational decision making in terms of budget
allocation and curriculum implementation. For example, principals will have full authority over how they
spend the student per capita grant and on how they design the school timetable.

CfBT commentary:
The latest research by education economists suggests that autonomy for schools only results in improved student
outcomes when school leadership teams know how to wield these autonomies effectively.2 Therefore, CfBT welcomes
the MOEs gradual release model where schools are given the autonomies only when ready.

Eric A. Hanushek, Susanne Link, and Ludger Woessmann, Does School Autonomy Make Sense Everywhere? Panel Estimates from PISA. (Asian Development Bank, January 2012)

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CfBT Education Trust commentary on the Malaysian Education Blueprint 2013-2025

CfBT recommends:
1) To aid principals and school senior leadership teams in the use of autonomies, MOE should consider developing a
range of standardised models for:

curriculum organisation; school timetabling; staffing allocation models

school budget management; school self-evaluation

behaviour management; and student affairs.

The idea would be to develop three or four standardised operating models for each area, accompanied by case
studies (both written and video talking heads with principals) showing how they have been deployed in different
schools. This would give principals a standardised decision framework and allow them to choose the best operating
model for their school from a range of menu items, providing a scaffolded approach to school-based management.
2) CfBT also strongly recommends that the approach to teacher timetabling and deployment should be radically
changed across all Malaysian schools:

Primary schools

Currently students remain in the same base classroom for most of the day and are taught by up to six separate
subject specialist teachers throughout each day. This means that there is no continuity between lessons or linkage of
themes. It also means that teachers must carry subject-specific resources into the class if they wish to use artefacts or
teaching aids to improve delivery which can disincentivise them to use resources.
We recommend, that in line with the majority of the worlds high-performing education systems, Malaysia returns
to a generalist teacher model at primary level. This would mean that a single teacher remained with each primary
class for the majority of the day, teaching a range of curriculum areas in a more integrated way. Each base classroom
should also be equipped with the full range of resources required to teach the full curriculum. This approach would
allow generalist teachers to take ownership of the classroom and be held fully accountable for the learning outcomes
of a single group of students that they get to know very well.

Secondary schools

The current model deployed in Malaysian secondary schools is similar to that employed in primary schools. For the
majority of lessons, students stay in the same base classroom for the whole day and wait for a succession of subject
specialist teachers to arrive and depart. We recognise that generalist teacher models are inappropriate at secondary
level as the more complex curriculum content requires subject specialist teachers.
However, in line with many high-performing systems, we recommend that each subject specialist teacher owns their
own classroom, which they can resource with the subject specialist equipment they need to conduct their lessons and
that students, rather than teachers, move between classes.

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Shift 7: Leverage ICT to scale up quality

learning across Malaysia
Augment online content to share best practices starting with a video library in 2013 of Guru Cemerlang
delivering lessons in Science, Mathematics, Bahasa Malaysia, and English language. Teachers will be
able to access even more exemplary teaching resources online. This will begin with a video library in
2013 of the top Guru Cemerlang delivering daily lessons in important subjects of Science, Mathematics,
Bahasa Malaysia, and English language. Other subjects will be added to the video library over time. This
resource can be used by teachers for inspiration, or even by students as a revision tool.

CfBT commentary:
In our experience of implementing national reform initiatives in the UK, the Middle East, Africa and Asia we have found
that engaging teachers in standalone Virtual Learning Environments (VLE), even if they are filled with rich, interactive
materials, can be difficult.

CfBT recommends:
1) The online library must be part of a blended solution, that incorporates face-to-face training and intercessional tasks
that require teachers to access the online library (via the Frog VLE) and to access and collaborate on the intercessional
materials and upload their responses.
2) The standardised scheme of work and differentiated lesson plans for all subject areas should also be accessed and
distributed from the Frog VLE.
3) Opt for quality over quantity in the development of the video library. For example, EDUWEBTV has tended to implement
the talking heads approach over showing examples of classroom footage, simply because the latter is very difficult to
develop to high production values.
4) Develop generic video clips that show a range of pedagogies being deployed in different subject settings and phases
such as cooperative learning and behavior management approaches as a series of top tips for teachers to deploy
within their own subject areas.
5) Incentivise teachers to upload their own unique or adapted schemes of work, lesson plans and student resources
to the network for access by all. Make evidence of this a requirement for promotion. Have an online ranking system,
so that the best content reaches the top and so that star content developers can be identified as future writers of
professional resources.

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CfBT Education Trust commentary on the Malaysian Education Blueprint 2013-2025

Shift 8: Transform Ministry delivery

capabilities and capacity
Deploy almost 2,500 more personnel from the Ministry and JPNs to PPDs in order to better support
schools by 2014. Schools will receive more hands-on support through the deployment of almost 2,500
teacher and principal coaches across all PPDs in Malaysia.

CfBT commentary:
From our experience of both high-performing and rapidly improving education systems, the development of a national
cadre of change agents that are close to schools and that operate on a peripatetic basis is one of the highest-leverage
reform initiatives that an education system can make.
However, for these change agents to be effective, the following requirements must be met:
1) There must be a robust recruitment process, so that only the nations best hold the School Improvement Partner (SIP)
role. Applicants must be selected against competency standards and through commercial and gruelling assessment
centre processes. These processes must be so demanding that even those who do not make the grade feel that they
have gained personal development simply from participating.
2) SIPS should be segmented into three types of sub-roles: a) Leadership Advisors who coach principals/PKs and who
in some cases may play the role of an Executive Principal, managing small number of schools; b) Pedagogy Advisors
who coach teachers on a range of generic pedagogies, undertake lesson observations and run action learning
sets; and c) School Business Advisors who support on budget management, procurement, facilities management,
and HR management. The School Business Advisor role will become more prominent as school-based management
is implemented and Principals have greater responsibility for commercial decision-making.
3) SIPs should undertake a comprehensive training programme, which may involve short electives to visit other countries
and explore the operation of their education systems and placements in blue-chip companies to develop an
understanding of corporate processes and how they might apply in the education setting.
4) SIPs must have an ongoing programme of peer mentoring and action learning sets, so that they can grow and fulfil
the requirements of their job roles.

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CfBT Education Trust commentary on the Malaysian Education Blueprint 2013-2025

Strengthen leadership capabilities in 150-200 pivotal leadership positions from 2013. The Ministry has
identified 150-200 pivotal leadership positions at the federal, state, and district levels that particularly
impact the activities of the 10,000 schools in the system.

CfBT commentary:
Again, as a longer-term strategy, we recommend leveraging Teach for Malaysia to identify the JPN Directors and MOE
Director Generals of the future. To fully implement this strategy, MOE would need to work closely with Teach for Malaysia
to map out potential career paths and fast-track arrangements for identified teaching fellows before they reached the
end of their fellowship. As an aside, in the UK, CfBT has found the Teach First Programme (sister of Teach for Malaysia)
to be an excellent source of recruits. This is especially the case when Teach First alumni have also gained experience in
blue-chip management consultancies prior to joining CfBT as they combine teaching experience with management
consulting discipline.

CfBT recommends:
1) That the MOE considers implementing a national development programme for system leaders and set the bar very high.
2) More controversially, that the MOE considers the possibility of recruiting from industry for JPN director and MOE
roles. In many high-performing education systems, at national level, the ratio of educators to professional project
managers, finance specialists and policy generalists is skewed in favour of the latter. This is because it is recognised
that the commercial, legal, financial, HR and Project Management skills required to manage an education system are
more akin to the skillsets of professional commercial managers who have specialised in these areas than those of
teachers.

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CfBT Education Trust commentary on the Malaysian Education Blueprint 2013-2025

Shift 9: Partner with parents, community,

and private sector at scale
Expand Trust School model to 500 schools by 2025 by including alumni groups and non-governmental
organisations (NGOs) as potential sponsors. A greater diversity of private and social sector entities will
have the opportunity to get involved in the school improvement process.

CfBT commentary:
We agree that the Trust School Programme has the potential to be a powerful change agent and that there are significant
signs of early impact in the current Johor and Kuching cohort of schools.
However, we believe that in the longer term the current model is flawed, for the following reasons.
By 2025 the Blueprint envisages that all schools will have the autonomies that are currently afforded to High
Performing Schools and Trust Schools. This raises the question of what the key difference would be between a Trust
School and a non-Trust School in 2025.
The Trust School model relies on Corporate Social Responsibility funding. Although Yayasan AMIR has successfully
raised a war chest of funds from GLCs to fund expansion of the programme until 2020, it is not a sustainable model to
part-fund 5% of the nations schools from corporate donations.
It is not currently clear what happens to each cohort of Trust Schools after the 5-year programme comes to an end or
who will be responsible for ensuring the schools continue to work within the Trust School framework.
Significant evidence from the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank and CfBT published research suggests that Public
Private Partnerships in education have significant impact in driving up education standards and that the models which
have the most impact are those where governments fund schools and the private/voluntary sector operates them.

CfBT recommends:

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1) T he MOE should consider revising the Public-Private School Operation Management Agreement
(PPSOMA), so that Education Management Organisations can be established to operate Trust
Schools on behalf of the government. This model is tried and tested in the US (Charter Schools), UK
(Academies and Free Schools) and Sweden (Free Schools). CfBT believes that the private management
of public schools will promote competition, choice, quality and greater accountability.

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CASE STUDY 1: CfBT SCHOOL MANAGEMENT PPP, ABU DHABI

CfBT managed four school clusters on behalf of the Abdu Dhabi Education Council (ADEC) in a
pilot school management PPP. In total, we managed 41 schools which included primary schools,
kindergartens, middle schools and high schools.
We were given considerable autonomy and flexibility to operate schools and direct authority
over the day-to-day operations of each school. CfBT teams worked within the schools to advise
and support the local teachers as they implemented the changes in curriculum and delivery, to
work to improve the quality of teaching and learning. The Abu Dhabi Education Council judged
our interventions to be highly effective.

CASE STUDY 2: CfBTS FAMILY OF ACADEMIES AND FREE SCHOOLS

In England, CfBT operates a chain of 14 academies with 9,200 students on behalf of the
Department for Education. These schools are fully government funded but they are managed
and operated by CfBT.
We operate an earned autonomy management system that encourages all of CfBTs academies
to strive to be the best they can be, with our assistance. The better our schools perform, the more
authority we devolve to them.
Two of CfBTs academies have already been graded as Outstanding by Ofsted and the others
are well on their way. Our first turnaround academy was in the top 1% of all schools in England
for its year-on-year improvement in 2010/11and has moved from unsatisfactory to good with
outstanding features in two years.
CfBT also operates two free schools community-established schools with the same status as
academies and will open two more in 2013.

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CfBT Education Trust commentary on the Malaysian Education Blueprint 2013-2025

Shift 11: Increase transparency for direct

public accountability
CfBT commentary:
Accountability is good. It encourages all stakeholders to play their part to make sure that implementation is successful.
Therefore, CfBT wholeheartedly endorses the proposed annual report and the proposed comprehensive stock-takes at
the end of each implementation Wave.
The MOE needs to consider fully what success looks like, both in terms of inputs and outputs. At present success seems
to be viewed in terms of Malaysias positioning in the 2024/25 PISA rankings. However, how will the MOE know whether it
is on track, given that there are three-year gaps between the PISA assessments?
Furthermore, is it appropriate to measure Malaysias success purely on the basis of its PISA ranking? Although the tests
are acknowledged to be the best current means of comparing education performance across nations, they are not
without flaws. For example, PISA has received criticism for:
the fact that it does not evaluate the quality of a countrys schools beyond gauging student performance in reading,
science and mathematics;
cultural bias in test items;
the absence of assessment before 4th Grade, so there is no information about early years performance;
the fact that the tests do not measure the degree to which the aims of the national education philosophy have
been achieved.
In most education systems, regular and systematic school inspections are the principal means of judging education
quality. However, beyond advocating inspections for pre-schools the Blueprint is silent on the inspection regime for
primary and secondary schools.

CfBT recommends:
1) The national inspection framework should be reviewed, to ensure that what schools are being inspected against
aligns 100% with the Blueprint framework.
2) Schools should be inspected more regularly. Our intelligence suggests that currently 10% of schools are inspected
in any given year. This should be raised to 33%, so that every school undergoes inspection at least once every three
years.
3) Accountability reporting should stretch beyond the Blueprint to schools themselves. Their positions in exam league
tables and their inspection report grades should be made publicly available to parents and the wider community. This
will ensure that schools are properly held to account by all their stakeholders.

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CfBT Education Trust

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46350 Petaling Jaya, Selangor, Malaysia
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www.cfbt.com