Can EteMS Teachers Deliver The Goods?

The new primary school curriculum, teaching Mathematic and Science with the medium of English (EteMS) which was implemented since the year 2003, is just old wine in a new bottle with a new label. The scheme was implemented in haste, it arose hot topics and endless discussions among the Chinese communities and societies.

As we all know, in education whatever plan or objective we set must be viable both in theory and practice. And it is undeniable that professional teachers are the key to the entire scheme, because teacher is the key personnel to make or to break a student. The authourity concerned always held the teachers responsible if a student fails his evaluations or assessments. Studies show that if teacher believes his students can do well they will do well, regardless of their academic abilities in school.

Remind you, Thomas Alva Edison (1887-1931) was a dropout of school, just because his teacher did not believe him would perform well in the future. Now a day we just realize that the Ministry of Education come up with a plan to weed out the dropout problem.

As a parent, I have no right to question the capability and dedication of out teachers. I just wonder their abilities to deliver the goods. Recently the Ministry plans to retrain all the EteMS teachers. Retraining may be the answer, but the core to the problem is competency. If the teacher is not competent, no matter how much training is introduced, nothing will change, and the weakness will stay forever.

Another problem is that teachers do not easily accept all the new ideas and methods relating to teaching a non mother-tongue language. They just stick to their old or maybe obsolete ideas and methods. They usually suspicious of the new ones which they are not familiar with.

Both the problems are enormous. EteMS was implemented in 2003,by the year 2008, the first group of primary students will be entering the secondary school. Can the Ministry make sure that all the teachers will be competent and full of confidence to face the new challeges?

As we all know, the official answers are less assuring if we look at the past experience. The EteMS are good programmes, yet they do not live up to our expectations. Close observation shows it is the teacher who is not competent enough to handle all the new materials.

Frankly speaking, as teachers, we have been assigned to mould students to what the nation demands, but regret to say we still need to undergo high calibre training, but yet we do not received such training. Maybe my academic qualification for English language does not make up to be chosen as a competent EteMS teacher, who are entitle to receive extra incentive allowance since the year 2003.

In addition many a teacher has no interest to teach Mathematics and Science in English, especially in a vernacular school , but most of them were assigned to do the job, just because the school headmaster thinks he can and he possesses a qualification. As time goes by, he knows what is the minimum expected of him. If a student fail the all the tests, nobody will cast a glance at him. Most likely they will point their fingers to the CDC.