KUALA LUMPUR: Despite the special one-off recruitment, the Education Ministry (MoE) is still facing a shortage of English and Islamic Education teachers.
Senior Education Minister Datuk Dr Radzi Jidin told the Dewan Negara today that the problem arose due to the low number of those with a Degree in Education (ikhtisas Pendidikan) in the two subjects.
"Based on the latest data, subjects with an inadequate number of teachers among education graduates are English and Islamic Education.
"We have tried our best to recruit candidates for the two subjects, but the number of Bachelor of Education graduates (for English and Islamic Education) are very limited.
"Although there are other subjects that also face a shortage of teachers, which is monitored closely by the ministry, recruiting teachers for English is the most critical and remains difficult at the moment," said Radzi.
He added that the ministry was looking into other approaches to ensure the country has enough teachers for the two subjects.
To date, Radzi said, there are still 4,932 vacancies available under the special one-off initiative that was rolled by the government last year to resolve the shortage of teachers throughout the country.
He also said the Education Service Commission (SPP) has successfully recruited 13,770 individuals as grade GD41 Education Service Officers.
From the total, he said a total 13,255 new teachers have been posted to their respective schools as of Monday (March 28).
The remaining 515 teachers recruited under the special initiative are slated to join the service on April 11.
The ministry in June last year announced the special one-off intake of teachers involving 18,702 Education Service Officers for grade DG41 to fill vacancies throughout the country.
Apart from Johor, it was reported that other states which are in dire need of teachers included Selangor, Sarawak and Sabah.