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CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION
1.0 Introduction
The degree to how the students think, feel, act and lead their colleagues often developed through
the extra-curricular activities (ECA) programed by their school. The theoretical lessons in the class may
often produce a bundle of knowledgeable students but sometime failed to bring them to the reality of
venomous life. Secondary school, in fact, tend to sponsor a lot of ECA yet only a few known about it
contribution to student’s educational development process.
Student performance at secondary school is the main determinant for enrolment in tertiary
education (Shulruf 2011). We are living in the competitive world where the competition to get enrolled in
the college was at the highest point. In addressing this demand, nowadays, secondary school has lay a lot
of emphasize on the co-curriculum by allocating higher considerable resources for its activities. In the
multicultural nation where the population comes from various background and beliefs, education system
through the clubs, societies and uniform bodies is the fundamental element in uniting the people. In
addition, students who failed to participate in ECA often experienced the communication apprehension in
their daily life since the communication skill are largely taught in the society or club when it is compared
to what has been taught in the classroom. According to Wan Nurul Aini (2012), students whom
apprehensive in communication will face detrimental effect in the long run, and effect normally begins
when they go for job interviews. On top of everything, there is no evidence that can deny the importance
of ECA since students would get a bundle of lessons that impossible to be demonstrate in the classroom.
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In the so-called examination and quantitative-assessments oriented education system like Malaysia,
ECA are managed by the ‘Guru Penolong Kanan Kokurikulum’ or co-curriculum teacher (CT). He or she
in authority to manage and ensure all the administration process of the extra-curricular activities in the
school. The existence of CT in the schools of Malaysian education system proved that the ECA has been
recognized as a vital component of student’s development. However, although CT can be considered as
top management of a school, CT are still weighed down by a lot of academic task. General observation in
secondary school in Malaysia, CT still have to prepare for their class and teaching stuff. As an effect, they
are less focus to his or her ECA jobs and triggered to the less effective ECA which indirectly put all the
students as a victim. Since CT play a major role in ECA, they are supposed not to be hampered by other
responsibilities in order to supervise the quality in co-curriculum implementation of the school.
1.1 Background of the study
The need to counterpart ECA and curricular together in the development process of the students in
secondary school has grown significantly along with the globalization. The more students are engaged in
their schoolwork, the more likely they are to perform well academically (Corso, Bundick, Quaglia and
Haywood, 2013). The time before this, the job recruitments only take CGPA or grade into account while
deciding on the employees. However, as the competition grows along with number of the population, the
communication skill, leadership skill, inter-personal skill and speaking skill are being counted in any job
interviews.
Academic achievement of the students were often measured by the CGPA or grade, conversely,
how the human resources department measure student’s achievement in communication and leadership
skill? Without any doubt they will refer those indicator by looking at student’s co-curricular participation
and their contribution in school or non-school programmes such as community services, competition, sports
and community engagement.
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This study articulate the idea on how importance of having the special person in charge in all ECA
without interfered with other responsibilities like academic and clerical jobs, particularly, CT. The
hypothesis statement of this study is, the more attention the CT can offer to their ECA tasks, the more the
quality of ECA that the school can conduct to their students.
Therefore, the hindrances those possibly interfered the major task of the CT need to be detected
and overcome fast as it may have damaging effects on the student’s personality as well as their
communication and leadership skill.
1.2 Statement of the research problem
By enforcing the students to become member of the club, society and uniform body is the simplest
and easy way to give mark and acknowledgement on their participation in ECA. In certain and definitely
anonymous schools registration as a member of those societies is must, not contributing is another issue
and remained unimportant. This situation occurs because the school emphasize more on the school image
instead of student’s performance. They want to be known as a school where the students involve in many
societies, in fact they are not. In a worse scenario, the school administrator just produce a lot of ECA
certificates to their students, and the students can choose which clubs or activities that they want their name
to be acknowledge in.
1.3 Research Objectives
The research objectives for this study are:
i. To identify the various tasks of the curriculum teacher in typical Malaysia secondary school
specifically in Shah Alam area regardless of its relevancy co-curriculum.
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ii. To determine the problem faced by the co-curriculum teacher in controlling the effectiveness of
extra-curricular activities on the skills development of the students.
iii. To identify the ways to overcome the problem faced by the curriculum teacher in controlling the
effectiveness of extra-curricular activities on the skills development of the students.
1.4 Research Questions
The research questions for this study are:
i. What are the tasks of the co-curriculum teacher in Malaysian normal secondary school in Shah
Alam area?
ii. What are the problems confronted by the co-curriculum teacher while striving for ECA
effectiveness to the students?
iv. How to solve the problem faced by the curriculum teacher in controlling the effectiveness of
extra-curricular activities on the skills development of the students.
1.5 Operational Definitions
The operational terms for this research are:
1.5.1 Extra-curricular activities: ECA is described as “student’s participation in a wide variety of activities,
over and above the core curricular teaching and learning classroom work” (Shulruf, 2011). He further
defined ECA as an integral component of school life. In this study, ECA is defined as any activities or
learning process that are held outside of the classroom in order to for students to learn what they could not
learn in the classroom session.
1.5.2 Co-curriculum teacher: As stated by NCTE (1998) in Quality Concerns in Secondary Teacher
Education, teacher is the most important element in educational programmes who mainly responsible for
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implementation of educational process at any stage. In this study, Co-curriculum teacher is well-defined
as a teacher who mainly responsible for implementation of co-curriculum programmes for the students. CT
is the one who will observe, admins, controls, guides the other teachers on how they are going to implement
the learning process through ECA. However, most of the time CT also has to do many additional jobs those
unrelated to the co-curriculum extent such as academic stuffs, teaching and classroom teacher. This was
happening just because of the lack in academic staffs and there is something not right on the way of top
management admissions and governs the whole system. It is not wrong but it is just not right.
1.5.3 Educational outcomes: According to Shulruf (2011), educational outcomes cover the academic
achievement, retention or school attendance, attitudes towards school, tertiary participation and aspirations
for tertiary education. Educational outcomes cannot be seen only by academic and numerical aspects only.
It must cover the academic aspect without the pass over the life skills and human development aspects
together in how we measure it. The students that possess the educational outcome should be excellent in
academic achievement, communication and leadership skills, their attitude towards the other people, how
they can communicate and make themselves be part of the society and not forgotten their aspirations to
tertiary education.
1.5.4 Academic responsibilities: According to the National Union of Teachers, through their published
journal academic responsibilities cover planning and teaching lessons and sequences of lessons to the
classes they are assigned to teach within the context of the school’s plans, curriculum and scheme of work.
They further defined, assess, monitor, record and report on the learning needs, progress and achievements
of assigned pupils and participate in arrangements for preparing pupils for external examinations. In this
study, we highlight academic responsibilities as any tasks assigned to CT that are not related at all to his
actual responsibility. It may include class lessons, clerical jobs, to prepare an examination question and
etcetera. The other responsibilities those unrelated to ECA may only unmotivated the CT and expectedly
will reduce the quality implementation in ECA.
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1.6 Limitation of the study
The small sample size of this research might result in insupportable findings that cannot be consider
represents all the situations those were happening in Malaysian secondary schools. In addition, to come
out with the trusted solution to the problem statements require a lot of time, effort and expenses, hence any
suggestion on action should be taken might not be necessarily useful and effective. Besides, not all
management of school allows open policies where they can expose all the information about current
problems faced by the CT. Some schools might rather choose to conceal some information, in which, they
think the disclosure would resulted in unprofitable event to the school.
1.7 Significance of the study
Nowadays, the tertiary education institution, private and government sector will not only put academic
qualification as an exclusively measurement in intake or recruitment process. In traditional practice, the
candidates with high CGPA or straight A’s on their certificate were likely to exempt to all job requirements.
But in the modern era, it does not make any senses anymore. The massive advancement in technology have
brought human-being one step forward, results in a lot of people now being exposed to vast information.
The world now has turned into a competitive market, hence, indicator that we called educational outcomes
are now being valued by the human resources department in order to measure student’s employability.
York (2004) defined employability as a set of achievements such as skills, understandings and personal
attributes that make graduates more likely to gain employment and be successful in their chosen occupations
which benefits themselves, the workforce, the community and the economy. What the students learn inside
the classroom is not comprehensive enough to tell them what the world is all about. There are many things
that are not covered through the formal curriculum syllabus, results in some students do not know how to
apply their knowledge in real life. The worst event is there are students that are not interested at all in what
they have been learning. “Participating in certain extracurricular activities having to do with the field that
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the student is interested in could help them find a job. If someone is looking at a resume for a potential
employee, and they see they have experience or interest in what they are looking for, they will be more
likely to hire that person. These students will then have higher career aspirations” (Massoni, 2011).
By knowing that, ECA has a positive relationship to student’s employability, the question of quality
in its implementation need to be revised. Occasionally, the changes in ECA policies sometime challenge
the forbearance of the teacher in charge requires them to cope with more emotional consequences. This
will certainly affect the quality of teaching in the class and the implementation of the ECA (Mohd Fitri,
2006). In order to improve quality of ECA, schools need the special person that will be in charge in all
matters about ECA and will not bothered by other tasks in the school and simultaneously, the ECA stuffs
will not bother the other academic teachers. As a result, both qualities in academic matters and co-
curriculum can be value-added. This study was trying to find if there any significant relationship between
a burden faced by the CT and the quality carried out from ECA that controlled by them. In the school, from
form 1 to form 5, every subject will be instructed by two or more teachers, ironically the matters related to
ECA among all students only been managed by one CT. Are we really serious to adopt ECA as a tool in
developing student’s educational outcomes?
It is hoped that, the findings and results from this study will offer insights and understanding about
this issue and may help the teacher and school management to improve the educational outcomes among
the leaders in the making under their supervision.
1.8 Conclusion
This chapter has covered the background of the study, the statement of the research problem, the
research objectives and questions, the operational definitions and the significance of the study. The
literature review of the issues related will be discussed in the next chapter.
