KUALA LUMPUR, March 14 — The billions poured into Malaysian education are not yielding results as the bulk of the funds go towards “unnecessary” infrastructure while teaching budgets are cut, a DAP lawmaker said today.

Responding to news reports quoting Deputy Prime Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin as expressing shock over the weak academic results of Malaysian students, Bukit Bendera MP Zairil Khir Johari pointed out that while the education budget has gone up, less was invested in training and improving teachers.

“Unfortunately, the government does not quite know where their priorities lie. In the 2015 Budget, for example, the total allocation for the ‘professional development’ of teachers has been slashed from RM1.54 billion in 2014 to only RM961 million,” he said in a statement today.

“This includes a reduction in ‘pre-service training’ from RM948 million in 2014 to RM851 million this year, while ‘leadership training’ was cut by two thirds from RM181 million to RM62 million. ‘In-service training’ of teachers, however, suffered the worst drop from RM410 million last year to RM48 million.”

Instead, he said Putrajaya was inclined to spend billions on computers and software, some of which are abandoned shortly after they are implemented.

As example, he cited the RM3 billion that was spent to prepare schools for the now-abandoned Teaching and Learning of Mathematics and Science in English (PPSMI) programme and the RM4.1 billion 1 BestariNet project that was revealed to be used by just 1 per cent of students according to a 2013 federal audit.

Zairil said that given the examples, Malaysian students’ continued poor performance in global education benchmarks should not be surprising to any, least of all the Education Ministry.

“Instead, what is truly shocking is the government’s denial syndrome and misplaced sense of priorities as they continue to channel billions of taxpayers’ funds into non-productive areas such as big-ticket infrastructure projects that only benefit private technology suppliers at the expense of the people that really matter ― our teachers and students,” he said.

Yesterday, Muhyiddin said he was “shocked” that Malaysian students continue to lag behind global counterparts despite Malaysia spending as much on education as some developed nations such as the United States.

Malaysia scored badly in two recent international benchmark studies on education: the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) and Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS).

In the 2012 edition of PISA, Malaysia was 52nd overall out of the 65 countries, and firmly entrenched in the bottom third of the survey.

Aside from the stagnant PISA performance, Malaysia has also faced a continued decline in the TIMSS benchmark in which the country once performed well.

Last year, Muhyiddin also expressed bafflement at local students’ inability to master English despite nearly two decades of education.