Ministry urged to help in training more teachers

STEPS are being taken to overcome the shortage of trained teachers in 523 Tamil schools, reported Malaysia Nanban.

Human Resources Minister and MIC secretary-general Datuk Dr S. Subramaniam said MIC would seek the cooperation of the Education Ministry to ensure that the 1,400 temporary teachers who are currently teaching in Tamil schools across the nation would be given the opportunity to pursue the teacher’s training course during the holidays within the next four years.

He said the Education Ministry had previously approved 100 places in the course for such teachers during the holidays, but at the request of MIC, had doubled the number of places to 200.

He said, however, that MIC found this number to be insufficient and had urged the ministry to allocate at least 300 places each year for temporary teachers from Tamil schools.

He was speaking to reporters after launching Canteen Day at the Meru Tamil School.

He said MIC was also in the midst of identifying problems faced by partly-aided schools and was taking the necessary action to solve these issues so that they could be converted to fully-aided schools.