KUALA LUMPUR, Oct 16 — The “hidden threat” to school safety in Malaysia lies in teachers’ heavy administrative burden, which hampers their teaching and weakens their relationships with students, Ampang MP Rodziah Ismail said today.
Rodziah outlined a long list of duties that teachers are expected to shoulder, including filling and submitting multiple digital reports across various systems, managing students’ discipline and welfare, organising activities, contests, lectures and workshops.
“The result is that teachers have less time to educate, listen and understand their students,” she said while debating Budget 2026 in the Dewan Rakyat.
She said this situation has led to declining quality in teacher–student relationships.
“When teachers are tired, interactions become mechanical. They only speak to students when necessary.
“Students today feel unheard and then seek attention through bullying, truancy and other offences we’ve recently heard about. Teachers’ stress levels also rise, and the school environment becomes tense,” the PKR lawmaker said.
Rodziah proposed three measures, starting with a call for the Education Ministry to reduce or remove bureaucratic processes in schools so that teachers can focus on teaching rather than paperwork.
She suggested the ministry develop a single national education digital system to integrate all reporting requirements, while reducing overlap between the ministry and education departments.
Schools, she added, should be given autonomy to decide report formats, and teachers equipped with tools such as automation and artificial intelligence to speed up documentation.
She also called for teachers to be provided with administrative assistants, and for each school to have a dedicated data officer to handle report submissions.
Such measures, she said, would help create more efficient and empathetic schools.
Secondly, she proposed that teachers’ wellbeing be made a key indicator of school safety, noting that stressed teachers cannot perform their duties effectively.
Lastly, she urged the government to form a new task force to address teachers’ workload and its impact on school safety.
