The Deputy Prime Minister of Malaysia, Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin visited the International Bureau of Education (IBE) in Geneva to mark the launching of a joint UNESCO-IBE and Malaysia project. Speaking to an international audience, he used the event to emphasize the role STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) education plays in transforming Malaysia into a high income and advanced economic nation.
Launching ceremony at IBE with the Deputy Prime Minister of Malaysia
During the event, the Deputy Prime Minister of Malaysia officially announced Malaysia’s financial and technical support to the IBE for the joint project on Strengthening STEM for girls in Africa and Asia Pacific, involving Kenya, Nigeria, Zimbabwe and Indonesia. In this area, the success of Malaysia is outstanding: in the country women constitute more than half of the student population in higher education for technology, as well as a high percentage of the professional ICT sector.
Our jobs are really fundamentally about changing people’s lives to enable them to exercise fully the right to education; in this particular case, the right of women and girls to have good quality STEM education. We are talking about almost half of the world’s population and we cannot leave out their contribution to development nor their optimal benefiting from that development. If we are not optimistic about the future, then why are we here?
As the UNESCO global Centre of Excellence in Curriculum, the IBE will collaborate with Malaysian expertise to strengthen STEM curricula, teacher education and assessment for girls and women in Indonesia, Kenya, Nigeria and Zimbabwe. The project will increase female knowledge and engagement in STEM through the creation of gender-responsive STEM education and strengthen capacities for the implementation of gender-responsive STEM curricula in the four beneficiary countries.
