By Sharanjit Singh, Adib Povera and Nadia Badarudin

JITRA, MALAYSIA: Schools with ideologies, character and a unique identity that enable students to excel in all aspects of education will be awarded the high-performance status.

Deputy Prime Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin said this was in line with ongoing efforts to expand access to quality and affordable education.

Muhyiddin, who is also education minister, said under the national key results areas (NKRA), the ministry was targeting to have 100 high performance schools by 2012.

"Our ultimate aim is to turn these schools into a benchmark of education excellence for other schools to emulate.

"These schools will display strong and excellent work cultures to produce dynamic human capital and promote holistic and continuous development for the country."

Muhyiddin added that the government wanted schools to improve their quality by reaching or surpassing the educational excellence benchmark and emerge as the first choice of primary and secondary education centre for Malaysians.

He said this when closing the First Regional Conference on Educational Leadership and Management yesterday.

The three-day conference was held at the Aminuddin Baki Institute, with delegates from Sweden, Indonesia, Singapore, Iran, India, Saudi Arabia and Malaysia.

To spur high performance work culture, the education ministry will introduce performance-based incentives for leaders and teachers of high performance schools.

Muhyiddin also stressed that a dynamic and passionate leadership was needed to improve the performance of the schools.

"Without high performance leadership, students would not perform and school quality declines. We need to cultivate high performance leadership to foster policies that promote quality learning and inculcate the right values in our children

"Headmasters, principals and members of school leadership must be dynamic, passionate about their work, disciplined, know their subject well and results oriented.

"They must be able to identify and address challenges as well as adopt continuous improvement culture when carrying out their responsibility."

Muhyiddin also said the ministry had introduced a new curriculum to enhance students' mastery of English, Science and Mathematics.

"At the same time, we continue to strengthen the position of Bahasa Malaysia as medium of instruction and a means to promote national unity."