Teachers urged not to react negatively to ‘working hours’ issue

The MySG outlines 45 working hours per week for civil servants in the country as set by the Public Service Department and in line with the rulings of the International Labor Organisation. – Bernama photo

KUCHING (March 11): Teachers in Sarawak are reminded not to react negatively to the issue concerning working hours among teachers that was raised on social media recently.

Sarawak Teachers’ Union (STU) president Adam Prakash Abdullah said the confusion over working hours among teachers was due to misinterpretation made by some parties regarding the implementation of Malaysian School Governance (MySG), which was released by the Ministry of Education (MOE) in 2021.

“STU believes that the confusion came about when a few principals and headmasters (PGB) made their own interpretation because they lacked full understanding of MySG.

“MySG does not actually involve an increase in working hours that would mean that teachers could only go back in the evenings after nine hours at work,” he said in a statement yesterday.

The MySG outlines 45 working hours per week for civil servants in the country as set by the Public Service Department (PSD) and in line with the rulings of the International Labor Organisation (ILO).

It is a comprehensive and systematic school management guideline, aimed at overcoming the issue of ambiguity in the role of teachers and implementation team members (AKP) in schools as well as standardising school management based on programmes and activities from the Ministry of Education Division that must be available in all schools.

As such, MySG was published as a guide to clarify the ambiguity of the functions and roles of educators, apart from being used as an official reference related to work process procedures and more orderly responsibilities, said Adam.

He also said that MySG could improve the work performance of teachers, and ensure they carry out their responsibilities based on existing rules and circulars.

“The working hours of civil servants are divided into office and non-office working hours.

“In schools, PGB and AKP work using office working hours, while teachers work using non-office working hours but are still bound by the PSD’s working hours of 45 hours a week.

“These include school hours, including the implementation of teaching and learning (PdP) and non-PdP as well as outside school hours such as co-curricular activities and others,” he said.

He said as far as STU is concerned, the government had never stated when teachers knock off work officially like other civil servants.

“In Sarawak, for instance, teachers start work from as early as 7am and they are off-duty when the school session ends and the rest of their working hours are continued outside of official school hours,” he said.

As such, he said the nine-hour period stated in MySG was not mandatory that teachers have to return at 4pm.

Adam said even though teachers may knock off work at 2pm, they still carry out their duties as educators at home such as checking students’ work, making plans for their lessons the next day, and even responding to queries from parents.

“STU hopes that the PGB will refer to the State Education Department if they have any doubts on the information in MySG.

“Please do not make your own interpretation because this can cause anxiety among the teachers. It is enough for teachers to do their job in today’s challenging environment,” he said.

from Borneo Post Online https://bit.ly/3Cy5CJD
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