School News

Malaysia Remains Triumphant at Global Robotics Meet 2016

The Malaysian contingent emerged overall champion at the World Robot Olympiad (WRO) for the sixth time after beating 57 countries in New Delhi, India. (Image via: The Star Online) With the theme Rap the Scrap, the contingent comprising of 19 teams from primary and tertiary level outshone the rest with their robotic designs and project.Overall, the contingent bagged two gold medals (out of seven in total) two silvers, one bronze and one excellence award. Prior to New Delhi, the teams selected to represent Malaysia were chosen over 3,000 others after competing at the National Robotics Competition (NRC) held at Universiti Teknologi Petronas in September.In the past seven years of competing, Malaysia has won the title of champions five times.(Image via: The Star Online) Deputy Education Minister, Datuk Chong Sin Woon said students active participation in competitions such as the NRC and WRO is important to promote STEM education among Malaysian students.STEM is a curriculum based on the idea of educating students in four specific disciplines — science, technology, engineering and mathematics — in an interdisciplinary and applied approach. In this burgeoning technological era these subjects encourage reasoning and teach the type of thinking skills that 21^st century adults are going to need in a world where almost everything will be enhanced by the use of robotics.Moreover, he added through robotics programmes students have a chance to apply computational thinking skills to their robotics projects. An important skill set that the ministry is integrating into the new Standard Based Curriculum for Primary and Secondary Schools.Robotics has also garnered international interest from parents as experts say, 'it's the future'. Google’s Senior Vice President, Susan Wojcicki explains, “Learning to code makes kids feel empowered, creative and confident. Shes added, if we want our youngsters to retain these traits into adulthood, a great option is to expose them to computer programming in their youth.”See also: Programming and Coding Holiday Classes for Children The country's education system has been under spotlight for its efforts to revamp the system to do-away with centralised exam-based assessment such as the UPSR and introduce school-based assessment that also prioritises co-curricular activities, amongst other things.Plus: UPSR to stay or to go? Decision to known next year The proposal to abolish UPSR is also supported by The National Union of the Teaching Profession (NUTP). The teacher's union came to the decision because the pressure to score all As is ridiculously high on both students and teachers.For decades, we have nurtured the toxic "memorizing" culture that has spread across generations. As a result, the country has been producing students which are less competent in critical thinking and communication skills that has set us back a notch against our neighbouring country, Singapore that continues to produce world-class students.Read: Singapore: Smartest Kids in The World According to the NUTP, the proposal to abolish UPSR is a step in the right direction, following the teaching practices of more successful countries.