Vimala Devi Sevapragasam- academic essay

ISSUES IN REMEDIAL EDUCATION IN MALAYSIA

In Malaysia, remedial education began in 1967 utilizing the ‘withdrawal system’. The
pilot project was done in nine primary schools across the country, which later continued with
the government introduction of various programs to enhance the 3Rs, such as Early
Intervention Classes for Basic Reading and Writing in 2006, Reading Skills Remedial
Program, Literacy and Numeracy, Guidance Program for Reading, Writing and Arithmetic
Skills and special Remedial Program to prevent failure in mastering the basic literacy and
numeracy skills, reduce the number of school- dropouts and low-achievers.

Remedial education is a discipline of education that aims to assist students who

need to obtain specific competences in a variety of abilities at various levels. Remedial
education is different when being compared to ordinary education or teaching. It is a form of
education to correct something deficient or to correct something that is not right or
something defective. This does not necessarily imply that such students have special need,
but rather that they are under prepared and require assistance in order to meet the desired
goals. However, in school, there are some issues that are related in Malaysian remedial
education that hinders the development of under –achiever students. In relation to teachers,
one of the issues is the school does not have teachers that expertise in remedial education.
The lack of training has resulted for the teacher to be unable to conduct the remedial class
efficiently. For a remedial education to be optimized, a competent teacher plays a crucial
role in determining the remedial class effectiveness. Meanwhile, the students themselves
also contributes for issues in remedial education to happen,for example , poor reading
fluency. There are few of them that are too weak in mastering the lessons, as a result of
having poor reading fluency. This has resulted to difficulties in understand the lesson.
Reading fluency and understanding the text is crucial in enabling student to gain knowledge.
Fluency bridge between word recognition and students comprehension, allowing them to
focus on their reading material . Lacking reading fluency means that students need more
time to understand the teaching materials which leads them to be needing remedial lessons.
Lastly there are issues related to teaching aids needed in remedial education. The
acquisition of appropriate teaching aids also is an issue in remedial education today. Almost
all schools discovered it is difficult to get appropriate and up- to- date teaching aids.
Electronic teaching aids was not sufficient for remedial education. According to the study,
30% of the teachers found that the teaching aids was insufficient, and more than 90% of the
teachers need to create their own teaching aids. Students show great interest in
learning when it involves electronic aids, thus lack of electronic teaching aids posed
as an issue that hindered the learning process among the remedial students. In
conclusion, the issues related to remedial education involves the teachers, students
stand also teaching aids. The issues existed in schools remedial lesson hinders the
under - achiever students’ development, halting their progress. Remedial education
is not a branch of the teaching profession that are free from issues , but if taken into
account, this rehabilitation education provides an indirect chance for the students to
have better future. These issues shall not be left unattended, but shall be solved for
a better development of Malaysia education system. A better education system aids
in preparing the students for a better nation.