KUCHING: Chinese-medium primary schools in the state will continue to face the challenge of a shortage of teachers this year.
Sarawak United Association of Chinese Primary Aided School Boards of Management chairman Pemanca Liu Thian Leong said currently there are seven headmaster posts vacant at Chinese-medium primary schools.
“There will be 12 (more) headmasters vacancies at the schools here by February. I urge the assistant headmasters to take up training courses to qualify themselves to fill the headmaster posts,” he said when inspecting a Chinese primary school here recently.
He said the state’s Chinese-medium primary schools still require 16 teachers and hoped the Education Department would hire temporary teachers if trained teachers are not available.
Liu also aired his fear that the department would assign teachers who could not understand Mandarin to the schools.
“It is a problem. Teachers who can’t understand Mandarin would affect the school in various aspects such as it is not flexible to arrange the teaching subjects and timetable,” he said.
He urged board members to immediately take necessary action if such a problem occurred.
Liu, who is also Federation of Boards of Management of Kuching and Samarahan Divisions Chinese Primary Schools president, said another problem was the low number of students in some remote areas.
He said this could be due to urbanisation as more people move to live in towns or cities.
Liu also denied a rumour that some rural Chinese-medium schools were charging fees of up to RM400, pointing out that fees were usually just over RM30 and less than RM100.
