Malaysia: Accreditation & Renewal of kindergarten/tadika licence procedures.

This entry is per the discussion with a registered tadika (kindergarten) operator in Malaysia recently, and I will include in my blog here. As a disclaimer, this is only a skeleton draft, but it will give you a general idea on how the accreditation & licence renewal procedures in Malaysia takes place.

The Ministry of Eduation (MOE) is responsible in implementing the Education Act 1996 in which pre-school to post secondary (Lower/Upper Form Six) education fall. The other government agencies that offer preschool education are the Ministry of Rural Development, the Ministry of National Unity & Social Development, and the Ministry of Women, Family & Community Development.

As said, tadikas or kindergartens are centres licensed to enrol children in the age group of 3.5/4 - 6 years of age. A centre which does not have the title "tadika" is questionable in its status of being a licensed centre under the Ministry of Education in Malaysia. So it is important for prospective parents, or trained teachers to do their research before settling at a centre to work at, or enrolling their children.

The tadika which I was working at is a private kindergarten, and hence by law, they are required to follow the National Preschool Curriculum set out by the MOE. This comes to mean that the private tadika is allowed to implement their own curriculum on provision that it is implemented on top of the National Preschool Curriculum.

Only International Pre-Schools are exempt from the jurisdiction of the Education Act 1996, and from abiding by the National Preschool Curriculum. The operators normally provide services for children from expatriate families and the learning program normally takes places in a foreign language (or fully in English, for the British & American International Pre-Schools).

The logistics & steps as per the accreditation & licence renewal procedure in Malaysia are as follows, that to renew the yearly kindergarten licence, the Ministry of Education (MOE) Malaysia requires tadikas to submit the set of forms that includes the processes of:

1) The Dewan Bandaraya Kuala Lumpur (DBKL) or your respective city's planning department approval. This depending on the discretion of the deptartment - may require renewal every 1-3 years). This includes having to check for fire emergency exits, structure of the building and passing the examination of the Fire Department's check. However, due to lack of work personnel, the authorities may or may not come to check.

2) Teachers' permit being required to renew on an annual basis. A renewal fee of RM2 is charged per application. This includes any new teachers that is being employed by the centre.

3) Filling in of relevant documents and statistics which includes information in each respective category of:
the enrolled children- number. of children in each age group, ethnic groups, gender,
the teaching staff- number of teachers, their gender, their qualifications,
the managing/administration staff- the Board of the centre: i.e, chairman, manager, princiipal, treasurer, secretary, etc. their occupations, their experience, their qualification.
the facilities of the centre- building size, equipment, building plan.
the hours taken per week for each subjectm, the medium of teaching, subjects taught in the centre.

According to the principal of a registered tadika (kindergarten), so far there has been no officer that comes to check the school over the last 12 years that the school has been in operation. It seems that there are not adequate enforcement officers in the MOE as they have to look into the public schools, the primary & secondary schools. The privately run centres also comes under the administration of the MOE. This includes private colleges, institutes, tuition centres and private tadikas.

The tadikas are zoned into different areas. The zone leaders will inform the schools for meetings and training workshops. They may have plans to award stars for outstanding kindergartens, but it is only a plan as there is always short of manpower in the MOE to implement ideas and quality control.

Tadika operators are facing decrease in enrollment each year as many unregistered preschools have sprouted up without any licences. Many operate in shoplots & dilute the business of those licenced & registered tadika operators.

Related Links:
Study Malaysia: Malaysia Education System.
ERIC: Promoting & Investing in EC Dev. Projects.
ERIC: Teacher Preparation & Professional Dev. in APEC: A Comparative Study.
ERIC: Experiences with the Situation Approach in Asia.