The blueprint highlight the aspires to ensure universal access and full enrollment of all children from preschool through to upper secondary school level by 2020,aspires for Malaysia to be in the top third of countries in terms of performance in international assessments.
Problems of the Present Situation .
The fact that our education system needs immediate and drastic transformation is evident. In the 2007 Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) around 20% of Malaysian students failed to meet minimum benchmarks for both Mathematics and Science, compared to only 5% in Science and 7% in Mathematics in 2003. According to the Programme for International Students Assessment (PISA) 2009+ report, Malaysian students ranked 55th out of 74 countries in terms of reading literacy, 57th in Mathematics and "only marginally better" in 52nd position for Science literacy.
This is because our educational system generally promotes surface and passive learning instead of deep and active learning which is crucial for creating a quality learning environment. The products of our school system are generally ill-prepared either for higher education, work or life in general. Our students lack critical and creative thinking skills because our education system promotes conformity and uniformity. Students often are required to memorize facts and formula in their classes. Often teachers gave a lot of facts and formulae for students to memorize. The students will then be tested with the memorizing skills through multiple choice questions and short answer type of questions. By doing so, the students just only memorizing the facts to answer rather than using own thinking skills to answer the questions. This indicates that Continuous Professional Development courses for teachers to teach are very important to change the quality of education of Malaysia.
Responsive Classroom (RC) Approach .