Gerakan welcomes the announcement of the National Key Result Areas (NKRA), including the widening of access to affordable and quality education.

Lau Chin Hoon, Chairman of Gerakan’s Education and Knowledge Society Bureau said that the concept of education refers to a long term process, hence when the government decides to reform education, it should emphasize also on quality and not only on quantity so that the attainment of one will not be at the expense of the other.

“We have to ensure that in achieving those goals, the quality of education is not neglected. It is easy to upgrade infrastructure and hard ware but it is not easy to create a pool of excellent teachers,” he said.

In relation to the objective of wanting Standard 4 students to achieve the 3Rs, he hoped that the 3Rs skills will be able to teach and stimulate student imagination, and at the same time the contents would also have to compatible with their environment and things that the student is familiar with. Matters pertaining to politics, social and nation consciousness that the student will not understand should not be included.

He also said, “The government, in giving out rewards for school performance, should also avoid ‘branding’ schools so as not to portray a ‘good’ school and ‘bad’ school impression among parents and society. Schools should adopt a communitarian concept where there is fair distribution of resources to every school in order to ensure that every student enjoys the same service.”

In regards to the absorbing of pre-school into the national education system, he suggested that priority should be given to mentally and physically impair children as they too have their needs and KPIs should be set for pre-schools and to have them achieved by 2012.