The Role of Crisis Management Strategies in the Continuity of School Education in Malaysia

Abstract

The issue of disruption and cessation of educational services during crises is one of the issues that receives great attention from governments and educational institutions. Therefore, Malaysia has taken several strategies to ensure the continued provision of school education services during the Covid-19 crisis. The problem of the study appears in evaluating and testing the role of these strategies in ensuring the continued provision of education services to the school sector in order to identify successful strategies. The main research objective was to test the effectiveness of the strategies taken by the Malaysian government to manage the crisis during the Covid-19 period and their role in the continuity of education in Malaysian public schools. The quantitative approach was employed in this research to test the role of crisis management strategies in the school education sector approved by the Ministry of Education in Malaysia in educational continuity. The questionnaire was used as a data collection tool. Data were collected from principals and administrative staff in government schools in the state of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and the study sample numbered 186 participants. The data was analysed using the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) to test the research hypotheses using multiple regression analysis. The study found that there is a positive relationship between crisis management strategies in the school education sector approved by the Ministry of Education in Malaysia and the continuity of education. The crisis management strategies (such as the pedagogy flexibility strategy, the synchronous and asynchronous learning strategy, the media engagement strategy, and the online teaching support strategy) have a positive impact on the continuity of school education in Malaysia, which indicates the effectiveness of these strategies in managing the crisis and their role in ensuring the continued provision of Education services, taking into account that some of these strategies were more effective compared to others from the point of view of principals and administrative staff in these schools. The current study makes an important contribution on the cognitive and applied levels. At the cognitive level, the study contributes to enriching scientific research, especially with regard to studies specialized in crisis management in educational institutions. At the applied level, the study contributes to evaluating the strategies implemented by the Malaysian Ministry of Education during the Covid-19 crisis in the education system and testing their effectiveness compared to each other, which allows managers and officials in the school education sector in Malaysia to strengthen the strategies that have proven effective.