KLANG, Jan 10 — The list of schools that have yet to resume physical class sessions due to the flood situation will be updated every Wednesday to enable the schools involved to start operations for the next week if they are ready, said Senior Education Minister Datuk Radzi Jidin.

“Every Wednesday, we will update the said list, and when these schools are removed from the list, meaning on Sunday or Monday (the next week), they can reopen based on depending they fall in Group A or B (states).

“At the same time, it will depend on the flood situation. Schools can reopen but when floodwaters rise, these schools must automatically close...and initial steps will be taken especially to inform parents (regarding the school’s closure),” he told reporters after visiting Sekolah Kebangsaan (SK) Meru, Kapar, here today, in conjunction with the reopening of schools in Selangor for the third term session for 2021/2022.

Schools in states where Sunday is the first working day of the week come under Group A while Group B involves states where Sunday is a rest day.

He said four million primary and secondary school students nationwide began the session involving 1.2 million students from Group A, yesterday, and 2.8 million students in Category B, today.

He said in Selangor, 264,201 secondary school and 446,816 primary school students, including preschoolers, started school.

Following his visit to SK Meru, one of the recent flood-affected schools, Radzi said he asked the State Education Department and PPD (District Education Office) to look into the needs of any of the affected facilities to ensure they have adequate furniture and equipment.

“If there is not enough furniture, we will bring excess furniture from other schools or other states,” he said.

On the new teacher exchange and placement management system (e-GTukar) which allegedly had limited exchange options, Radzi said his ministry would always improve the system to enable it to be at the optimum level.

“We will always study to see approaches that can be used to improve the system.

“We take into account the views (of teachers) on the choice of being given three states (for exchanges involving states) and where they are forced to pick three states when they only want to move to one state. The same goes for transfers involving the PPD and so on,” he also said.

He added that for inter-state exchanges, even if only one PPD was specified for each state, the system would see which PPD was closest to the PPD chosen by the applicant. — Bernama