NEWS: Ministry banking on ICT to achieve objective

The Star

PUTRAJAYA: The Education Ministry is looking to information and communication technology (ICT) to strengthen national schools.

Minster Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Tun Hussein said the ministry would focus on its "Making Schools Smart" programme this month as well as on efforts to rebrand existing smart schools.

This is in line with the third thrust of the National Education Blueprint 2006-2010 – strengthening national schools.

The programme, Hishammuddin added, represented a continuous process in enhancing the use of ICT in education to upgrade the quality of teaching and learning, the administration and management of schools and the competence of teachers.

"It involves efforts to provide all the ministry's schools with infrastructure, equipment, software and applications, training of teachers and change management programmes that are suitable and adequate," he said in a statement yesterday.

Under the programme, all ICT initiatives – computer labs and the computerisation of schools, smart schools, the teaching of Mathematics and Science in English, Internet access through School-Net, software development courses, access centres and TV Pendidikan – will be streamlined.

Hishammuddin also said the 88 smart schools introduced between 1999 and 2002 with the cooperation of the Multimedia Development Corporation would be upgraded and rebranded to make them models and a benchmark for the country's 10,000 schools.

Meanwhile, Malaysia's achievements in education are now on display at an exhibition launched by the minister yesterday at the Unesco headquarter in Paris.

Themed Celebrating 50 Years of Malaysia's Accomplishments, the five-day show would not only highlight Malaysian education system but also promote the country as a model of peace and unity through education, Hishammuddin said in a separate statement.

The minister, leading a 12-member delegation to France and Swit- zerland up to Friday, said the six-day working trip would enable Malaysia to learn the best education-related practices of the French and Swiss governments.

"These will include effective methods of learning and teaching, strategies in marketing educational products overseas, approaches in dealing with disabled students, the implementation of arts curricula at the school level and the creation of a network of international schools in the two countries," he said.