The ministry of education has revealed that they are focusing on introducing vocational subjects into the syllabus at 101 schools in 2010.
The vocational subjectswill include trade-specific skills such as computer hardware, electrical wiring, cooking, baking and hospitality.
“We believe technical vocation subjects are important, and they have worked in other countries as well,” said Education Minister Dr Mustafa Luthufy.
“Some of the courses have a small fee because we need to bring in specialists from that particular area, but we are working to instill skills in the teachers so that they may take these classes,” he added.
Education standards in the country had slipped, he confessed, revealing that UNESCO would be conducting a one and a half year research project to find out the cause of the slip.
“Some of the things they will be looking into include how children are being taught, the relationship between teachers and parents and the teacher training syllabus,” Luthufy said.
He said the ministry also planned to “align the education system closer to Islam” by training more teachers in Islamic studies and the Quran, Luthufy said, in the hopes of “instilling religious spirit in students.”
Waning student interest in science was another concern, said Deputy Education Minister Dr Abdullah Nazeer.
“We want to introduce science education into the atoll schools to improve critical thinking,” he said.
“We want to expand the streams available to schools in the atolls, At the moment the O level and A level is dominated by the commerce stream.”
The ministry also announced plans to privatise more schools, introduce more foreign languages and train more Maldivian teachers.
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This is a great move by Mustafa Lutfi. (A GIP Minister I might add). But vocational training should be introduced as electives and things like science cannot be neglected. Its time we as a nation moved away from the single track systems that place students in a track by the time they're done with middle school!
No child knows what they are going to at the age of 13!?!? A student chooses science, and is stuck in that track all throughout high school and then in college, and then the options afterwards of often limited as well.
Dr. Luthfi and Dr. Nazeer are doing a great job trying to break from the mold a little and work within the constrains of the system (And yes, I am biased because they are both part of GIP). However, I do believe we need to move further and radically change the system to make sure that students have ever opportunity to advance themselves and contribute to both our society and economy.
Personally, I think we should do away with A Levels and O Levels - but no one in Maldives agrees with me because very few people have experience with it. BUT, I think teacher, student and parent relations are far better in the American based system - rather than the British one.
I am disappointed that the Education Minister has put no emphasis on teaching students civic education classes and other humanities courses that would aid them in becoming good national and international citizens. I sincerely hope that 'align(ing) the education system closer to Islam' means teaching students the peaceful ways and the humble lifestyle of the Prophet (pbuh)rather than the crazy xenophobic jihadists ways of our populist Mullah's.
Nadya, I agree with you 100%.