Latihan Dalam Perkhidmatan

Can't remember when this was implemented but it's within the last 2-3 years. In an effort to maintain our professionalism and also keep us up-to-date, every teacher has to go for 7 days of courses... well, that's for the first year. In order to ensure that everyone could meet that 7 day target, schools had to conduct in-house training. It was a problem for many schools cos to do that we need people to conduct. But there was no problem of allocations...

By the second year, they made some amendments. Meetings were counted too as part of the 7-day thing. Still, some people found it hard to meet the 7 day requirement. And the gahmen was in the midst of another economic crunch.... but allocations were still rolling in...

This year, they changed the 7 day course/meeting thing to reviews for 7 books! Obviously the allocations have run dry! We hear of allocation trimming every where. Anyway, we've been told that the 7 books must be 'academic' or professional books. LOL! I can already forsee many loopholes. With the internet, there is actually no need to read. Just google reviews of the academic books 'you want to review' and you can cedok here and there and cook up your own. 7 synopsis shouldn't be too difficult. 8)

Anyway, perhaps the gahmen should consider making sure teachers remain competent by having a licensing or competency board, every few years go for some assesment or produce something that is quantifiable. Maybe that might do a thing or two to weed out the incompetent teachers or keep them on their toes...

And there is also nothing to prevent those who are more 'industrious' to do some business on the sideline. Compile book reviews in 7s and sell them! Nobody's going to know who did it! Or do exchange with friends from other schools.

We're trying to encourage people to read... and failing quite miserably at it. Teachers are to encourage students to read; but teachers themselves don't read save for the newspapers. Some teachers don't even read the papers! Plagiarism, anyone? LOL!