KUALA LUMPUR – The Education Ministry is standing by its decision to prioritise teacher candidates with educational certifications, following a backlash from rejected contract teaching applicants who alleged ambiguities in relation to the special recruitment drive.
In a press conference today, Senior Minister Datuk Mohd Radzi Md Jidin stressed that the ministry has always been transparent in its principle of giving precedence to teacher candidates with teaching accreditation.
“Some have accused us of being obscure while others called us scammers, but we have always made it very clear that we prioritise graduates with educational certification.
“If there are empty slots after we have considered our supply of certified educational graduates, only then can we open up placements for those who come from a non-educational background,” he said.
On Tuesday, former deputy education minister Teo Nie Ching had called on the ministry to hold discussions with rebuffed contract teacher candidates who took their grievances to her after the results of the recruitment process were announced on May 28.
In addition to alleging that successful candidates included those who had previously failed due to incomplete documents following the one-off recruitment scheme, the excluded candidates also scrutinised the inclusion of candidates from a separate programme to be part of the contract teaching intake quota.
In response, Radzi said that it would be “unfair” for the ministry to ignore candidates from the one-off teacher recruitment scheme who had already passed their interviews but were turned away due to insufficient documents, as such matters were “not their fault.”
“We decided to take them in through the contract system but it is a different channel than from the one for those with no educational certification.
“No one ‘makan’ anyone else’s portion, everything is proper and in order,” he said.
He explained that the procedure behind hiring a candidate without educational certification requires approval from the Public Service Department (PSD), after which the Education Service Commission (ESC) will be able to determine how many applicants are needed.
“There is no such thing as a quota. The namelist of those shortlisted was sent to PSD and ESC will appoint candidates from this group once we have run out of candidates with educational certification,” he said.
He added that when the special one-off teacher recruitment scheme had been announced during the peak of the pandemic period in June last year, the ministry’s “noble intention” was to quickly appoint teachers and provide them with an income, while reducing unemployment rates.
“No one knows exactly how many education graduates there are in the market,” he said, noting that the ministry is working on expanding the capabilities of teacher graduates by broadening the scope of subjects they can teach.
“If they are a physics teacher graduate, for example, they can also teach mathematics. This is an approach that has never been implemented before,” he said.
Previously, education graduates had cried foul over apparent flaws in the ministry’s special one-off teacher recruitment scheme, having submitted a memorandum to Putrajaya detailing their complaints. – The Vibes, June 2, 2022
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