Program Sekolah Bestari di Malaysia...Malaysia's Smart School Program

“ICT in education is viewed as an enabler for learning, to enrich the curricula, and to enhance pedagogies. With appropriate e-management systems, it enables school administrators and principals to become more effective school managers. Through the establishment of Smart Schools in Malaysia, learning is more dynamic, lively and interactive through the use of multimedia technology and worldwide networking.”
 -Abdullah Sani, Director of Malaysia’s Educational Technology Sector in the Malaysian Ministry of Education

 Malaysia’s goal of becoming a fully developed nation by 2020 as well as a competitive actor in the global economy has led the Malaysian government to emphasize the use of ICT in primary, secondary and university level education. In 1996 the Malaysian government made a conscious decision to prioritize ICT training and use in order to shift from having an economy based upon production to one based upon knowledge.  This shift would come with the enactment of Malaysia’s new Smart School Project.

 Dr. Mahathir Mohamad, Former Prime Minister of Malaysia developed the core vision of the Smart School Program.  He envisioned the changing role of teachers in a new, electronic classroom.  This would mean that teachers would relinquish their traditional role of information ‘providers’ and would instead become information counselors or facilitators that would help students to develop the skills and judgment needed to find reliable information online.  In addition, Mahathir notes that the key to success in this Information Age is based upon making the ‘right’ judgment between arrays of informational choices.  The former Prime Minister’s final vision is that the Malaysian government examines and analyzes its education system in order to create a system of learning that will facilitate higher education.

With the development of the Smart School Program, the Malaysian government revised its national philosophy of education, prioritizing: the creating of a thinking and technology-literate workforce and democratized education.  The initiatives the country has enacted to bring about these fundamental changes are manifested by the projects accompanying the new Smart School program.  These include “MySchoolNet,” the Computing Tablet project, and Computerization program. 

MySchoolNet is a website developed by the Ministry of Education that provides links to educational sources and information across Malaysia.  The most progressive, main feature of this website is the interactive communication that Malaysian students are able to experience with other students worldwide. Malaysia’s Computing Table project was a pilot program implemented in 2004.  It was launched in few rural areas of the country and was seen as a way in which laptops could be involved in the enhancement of teaching in a wireless technology environment.  Finally, the Computerization Program provided schools across the nation with computer labs equipped with cutting edge hardware and software.  This program has been implemented in various stages, with the goal of nationwide application.

As of 2011, 250,000 teachers in Malaysia have attended courses aimed at teaching teacher literacy and implementation in the classroom of ICTs.  According to Abdullah Sani, the director of Education Technology in the Malaysian Ministry of Education, “As a part of the [teacher] training module, teachers are informed about the availability of online and offline resources, and centrally prepared teaching courseware and e-materials for use by teachers and students.”

Sani also notes that the success of ICT use in schools is monitored through the Smart School Qualification Standards (SSQS) instrument, which is comprised of valuation factors such as: utilization, human capital, and applications/technology infrastructure. In 2010, the SSQS results in 2010 have 91 per cent of 8955 schools achieving a smart school status with “3-star ranking” and above. 

 Malaysia’s Smart School project seems to be well structured and guided, but the true qualifier of the program will come in 2020. The success of the Smart School program will be judged by the ability of the Malaysian government to meet its goal of being a fully developed nation with a knowledge-based economy, and technologically skilled citizens.