A Development of Tahﬁz Selangor School System

Suziyanti Marjudi

, Md. Sidin Ahmad Ishak

, Syahirah Ismail

, Eda Suhana Sharudin

, Ab Razak

Bin Aripin

and Haﬁzah Khusni

Faculty of Commmunication, Visual Art and Computing, Universiti Selangor (UNISEL), Kuala Selangor, Malaysia

Institute of Islamic Epistemology and Curricular Reform (IIECR), Centre of Excellence, Universiti Selangor (UNISEL)

Shah Alam, Malaysia

Faculty of Education and Sosial Sciences, Universiti Selangor (UNISEL), Kuala Selangor, Malaysia

Keywords:

Tahﬁz, Database, School System, Web-Based System

Abstract:

This paper aims to imperatively help society to ﬁnd the best Tahﬁz school for their children through the ad-

vancement of data tracking. The research team developed an online Tahﬁz database system which includes

Tahﬁz schools in Selangor (registered or non-registered with JAIS). The data were collected through ques-

tionnaire, online survey, group interview as well as case studies from respondents, including JAIS, PINTA,

PITAS, parents/guardians, students and teachers of Tahﬁz school. This online database system was developed

using Ampps Software, MySQL Benchwork 6.3, Adobe Dreamweaver CC 2015, Notepad++, and Windows

10. It will be ran on the UNISEL server. The data was enhanced and analyzed using statistical techniques and

queries done in the MySQL Benchwork 6.3, Microsoft Excel, and also Google Form. This paper concludes

that the system can provide, display, analyse and manage a heuristic series of all Tahﬁz schools in Selangor.

The system is also designed as a one-stop centre for both the clients and their customers.

1 INTRODUCTION

In the light of recent events, as Selangor state moves

towards the transformation of Smart City and focus-

ing on Smart Education, Tahﬁz schools are also on

the rise in Malaysia, especially in Selangor states that

since 2011 to 2017, there has been up to 900 new pri-

vate Islamic schools in Malaysia. Author emphasizes

that parents trust Islamic schools, including Tahﬁz

schools, as a place of character building and religious

knowledge, other than a place to instill moral values

and other extensive knowledge needed by a Muslim

youth. In Selangor, parents actively search for Tahﬁz

schools available for their children, either for primary

or secondary level. They search for the schools via

the schools’ webpages, Facebook page, or other web-

pages that give a list of these schools, like the Jabatan

Kemajuan Islam Malaysia (JAKIM) SIMPENI page

(url: http://simpeni.islam.gov.my). Unfortunately, not

all parents are aware of these pages.

In Selangor, Tahﬁz school owners need to register

their schools for it to be easily tracked down and to

get either ﬁnancial or social aid from the government.

According to Jabatan Agama Islam Selangor (JAIS),

information on the current registration process is in

the JAIS webpage. However, the actual registration

process has to be done manually at the Islamic Edu-

cation Unit either at JAIS or its respective district cen-

ter. This complex registration process involves getting

a one year temporary license after obtaining recom-

mendations from the local district and state Islamic

authorities. Then these schools need to get recom-

mendations from the local district council, ﬁre depart-

ment, and JAIS within three years in order to be given

an operating permit. This permit has to be renewed

every ﬁve years. Only schools with these permits are

considered registered.

This paper studies a heuristic series of all Tahﬁz

Selangor schools. There are nine districts in Selan-

gor, which are Gombak, Hulu Langat, Hulu Selan-

gor, Klang, Kuala Langat, Kuala Selangor, Petaling,

Sabak Bernam, and Sepang. The series are collected

from JAIS, PINTA and PITAS database. It also an-

alyzes statistics for report generation for JAIS. The

statistical and analyzed data can be saved in the sys-

tem, where future reports can refer back to the older

reports for data comparison. Lastly, an online Tah-

ﬁz school database system is developed, focusing on

registered and unregistered schools, and also school

performances. Hence, this makes the system a one-

Marjudi, S., Ishak, M., Ismail, S., Sharudin, E., Bin Aripin, A. and Khusni, H.

A Development of Tahﬁz Selangor School System.

DOI: 10.5220/0009865400980103

In Proceedings of the International Conference on Creative Economics, Tourism and Information Management (ICCETIM 2019) - Creativity and Innovation Developments for Global

Competitiveness and Sustainability, pages 98-103

ISBN: 978-989-758-451-0

stop center for both the clients and their customers.

2 LITERATURE REVIEW

Smart Schools are the most revolutionary way to instil

technological advancement into the education system.

According to (Omidinia et al., 2012) Smart Schools

are learning institutions that have been integrated with

ICT systematically in their teaching-learning prac-

tices and school management. This is to prepare fu-

ture generations for the Information Age and the days

of Global Village. This statement is true and sup-

ported by (Prendes et al., 2010) in their research ti-

tled “ICT Competence of Future Teachers.” Since its

inception in Malaysia in 1996, Smart Schools have

achieved excellence in Malaysian education system

(Sua, 2012) and have managed to settle many rele-

vant issues such as management and administration,

social skills, policies, and many more.

The success of its implementation into the na-

tional education system even made countries like Iran

refer to Malaysia before implementing Smart School

into their education system. Its implementation have

improved many things, especially communication be-

tween parents and schools.

The biggest advantage when integrating ICT is

that education management can be more efﬁcient, ef-

fective and productive (Ghavifekr et al., 2013). This

is also supported and emphasized by (Afshari et al.,

2012) and (Hassan et al., 2015). Paper processes

lack control when dealing with complex processes

such as synchronizing data and communication be-

tween administration head, teachers, and staff. Ulti-

mately, implementing Smart Schools does have prob-

lems when schools have no electricity, frequent power

outages, lack of proper infrastructure and computer

literacy (Lateh and Muniandy, 2010) but the prob-

lem decreases when there are more internet coverage

and structures built since the implementation of the

1Malaysia programme in 2010.

However, the Tahﬁz community still have not fol-

lowed this technological advancement. They still use

manual process to register students and school man-

agement. (Omidinia et al., 2012) did point out that is-

sues related to non-implementation could be due to ﬁ-

nancial support other than inexperienced teachers, be-

sides having the correct networking equipment such

as internet router, desktop, modem, internet-line, and

many more.

In this research paper, author will focus on the

issue of registering schools and its importance relat-

ing to the National Education Act. The research is

based on implementing online registration technology

that can enable parents to track Tahﬁz schools and for

JAIS ofﬁcials to generate report on it. Therefore, the

authors will highlight the current technology imple-

mented for online registration systems, and also track-

ing technology used by companies like Agoda and

Trivago. The author will also research on data analy-

sis technology and report generating system and tech-

nology such as text editors in online systems. Next,

author will summarise the best system to implement

in the project system.

3 METHODOLOGY

This paper focuses on Rational Uniﬁed Process

(RUP) as its research methodology. Data collection

methods of this paper differ for each users of the sys-

tem. For JAIS, the research team headed out to do a

group interview on 28th December 2017 with JAIS.

This was to discuss the early objectives of the pa-

per, and the requirements of the registration process

of the Tahﬁz schools. This was also to obtain the reg-

istered schools database, and also know where to ﬁnd

the unregistered schools database. The research team

also obtained the registered schools’ database from

JAIS and were told to cross reference this information

with PINTA and PITAS records. Information was also

gathered on the performance of all Tahﬁz schools in

Malaysia especially in Selangor.

For Selangor Tahﬁz owners, the research team

headed out to do a group interview on 30th January

2018 with PINTA ﬁrst for cross referencing data.

Next, a series of questionnaires were handed out dur-

ing an event with PITAS in UNISEL Bestari Jaya

Campus from 8th to 9th March 2018. The target were

all Selangor Tahﬁz owners present during the event,

the students that came along, and some staff mem-

bers. This was to understand how the current Tahﬁz

manual system works, and also to grasp a further un-

derstanding of how this paper can help them.

For parents, Tahﬁz students, and the general pub-

lic, a series of online survey were handed out through-

out the whole March 2018. The target are parents and

Selangor Tahﬁz students, and also the general public.

From the online survey, there were many extremely

good recommendations given as the public users re-

ally wanted a comprehensive system that could help

them understand the whereabouts of Selangor Tahﬁz

schools better.

A Development of Tahﬁz Selangor School System

4 RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

From the online survey and manual hand out of the

questionnaires, 118 respondents gave feedback. The

results in Table 1 show that most of the respon-

dents are from the Tahﬁz community, while others are

keen general public. The data comprises of mostly

adults that live in Selangor, while the minority are

teenagers and respondents from outside of Selangor.

This makes the data more reliable as the Tahﬁz com-

munity from Selangor are the ones giving feedback

and they are the main stakeholders of the system. The

respondents mostly know how to use the internet and

use smart phones and laptops to surf the internet and

they use it almost every day. This indicates that they

have at least basic knowledge of using the internet,

hence they will know how to use a simple system.

Therefore, the system developed cannot be too com-

plex as only half of the number of respondents are

tech savvy and surf the internet daily for online pur-

poses such as online banking, e-learning, e-news, e-

sport and many more.

However, not many respondents know how to look

for the Tahﬁz schools through the World Wide Web.

Most of them search for the schools through Facebook

and mouth to mouth conversation with friends and

family. There are a small number that ﬁnd out about

it through television, newspaper, radio and other ways

such as mosque committee. This shows how respon-

dents have to manually look for the Tahﬁz schools

with whatever knowledge they have. Not many know

what system can cater for their search, therefore they

use Facebook and social media as another source. If

they still do not ﬁnd the result, then they look for fam-

ily and friends who know about it, before mass media.

Other than that, respondents mostly take more

than half an hour to look for the details. Only a quar-

ter of them know where exactly to look for the right

source. This indicates that respondents need a one

stop center that can help them validate the schools

that they have found. The results in Figure 1.1 and

Figure 1.2 also show that most of the details found

by respondents are school names, address, and tele-

phone number. Most of them could not ﬁnd the most

important details like school fees, school registration

status, curriculum, and location from their home. One

respondent commented on how hard it was for her to

look for the email and other details that she had to go

to the school just to ﬁnd out that it was not the school

for her child. This is time consuming for the respon-

dents. Furthermore, it is derived that most respon-

dents want to know about the schools’ performance

and current news, followed by JAIS announcements,

current school statistics, and lastly annual calendar.

That is why most of the respondents want a one stop

center that can help them track down schools, while

school owners can register their schools and higher

ups can do any approval necessary to manage Selan-

gor Tahﬁz schools.

After a pilot test of the system, it can be de-

rived that the system searches allow parents to view

the schools’ environment, curriculum quality, perfor-

mance, number of students, and many more attributes

and whereabouts before deciding on the best Tahﬁz

School to enrol their children in. They can rely on the

information provided by the system, as all the schools

listed are also registered under JAKIM, PINTA and

PITAS. Since the database is the main key to the

transparency of the system, this ensures that the re-

port generated are precise and can be put to measure.

However, there were some difﬁculties and constraints

faced during the completion of the paper. The main

limitation is that there are some unregistered schools

that cannot be identiﬁed and that some of the data ob-

tained also have redundant data entry. Therefore, it

took time to clean the data before applying it to the

system. This was important as the data cleaning will

ensure the highest data integrity and reliability.

Table 1: Summary of Respondents Information

Background Percentage

Gender

Male 28%

Female 72%

Age

13-20 years old 28%

21-30 years old 30%

31-50 years old 32%

51-60 years old 8%

Above 61 years old 2%

Area of Living

Selangor 77%

Outside of Selangor 23%

Status

Tahﬁz owner 23%

Tahﬁz student 23%

Tahﬁz staff 3%

Tahﬁz parents 24%

General public 27%

Important ﬁndings are featured in the above table.

From the online survey, 118 respondents gave feed-

back. The results in Table 1 show that 73% of the re-

spondents are from the Tahﬁz community, while only

27% are keen general public.

Whereas, 72% of the respondents are female.

Their age ranged from 13-20 (28%), and majority of

the responses come from adult aged 21 to 50 or 62%,

ICCETIM 2019 - International Conference on Creative Economics, Tourism Information Management

100

and the rest are between age 51 and above, which en-

compass of 10%. The data comprises of 77% adults

that live in Selangor, while the minority or 23% are

respondents from outside of Selangor. Thus, it proves

that the data is relevant to the study and reliable as the

Tahﬁz community from Selangor are the ones who

give feedback and the main stakeholders of the sys-

tem.

Figure 1: Knowledge on Internet USage

Figure 2: Technology Used to Surf Internet

Figure 3: Frequently Online

Figure 1 show only 2% of the respondents did not

know how to use internet. Figure 2 show most of them

(98%) know how to use the internet and smart phones

(78%) and laptops (18%) to surf the internet and they

use it almost every day. Findings show in Figure 3

indicate that 49% of the respondent use internet daily,

in comparison with only 8% of them use internet be-

tween 8 to 14 days.

This indicates that they have at least basic knowl-

edge of using the internet. Hence, the ﬁnding shows

that the respondents understand how to use a simple

system. Therefore, results from this survey would

give researcher a better understanding on internet us-

age environment in Selangor. As a result, less com-

plex system is developed thru the study, since only

half of the number of respondents are tech savvy and

surf the internet for daily purposes only, such as on-

line banking and surﬁng e-learning, e-news, e-sport

and many more.

Current tahﬁz Search knowledge and management

iS categorized into two Section, knowledge on tahﬁz

Figure 4: Knowledge on Tahﬁz School Search

Figure 5: Time Taken to Search for Information

School Search and time taken to Search for informa-

tion. The ﬁnding indicate that 75% of the reSpondent

take more than half an hour. The research proves that

35% of the respondents Searched for information of

tahﬁz from web inStead of facebook, radio, people

from the community (Figure 4 & 5 ).

Figure 6: Information Respondent Found when Searching

for Tahﬁz Schools’ Details

Figure 7: Information Respondents Want to Find

However, not many respondents know how to

search for the Tahﬁz schools through the World Wide

Web. Most of them search for the schools through

Facebook and conversation with friends and fam-

ily. There are a small number that ﬁnd out about it

through television, newspaper, radio and other ways

such as mosque committee. This shows how respon-

dents have to manually look for the Tahﬁz schools

with whatever knowledge they have. Not many know

what system can cater for their search, therefore they

use Facebook and social media as another source. If

A Development of Tahﬁz Selangor School System

101

they still do not ﬁnd the result, then they look for fam-

ily and friends who know about it, before mass media.

Other than that, respondents mostly take more

than half an hour to look for the details. Only a quar-

ter of them know where exactly to look for the right

source. This indicates that respondents need a one

stop center that can help them validate the schools that

they have found. The results in Figure 6 and Figure

7 also show that most of the details found by respon-

dents are school names, address, and telephone num-

ber. Most of them could not ﬁnd the most important

details like school fees, school registration status, cur-

riculum, and location from their home. One respon-

dent commented on how hard it was for her to look

for the email and other details that she had to go to

the school just to ﬁnd out that it was not the school

for her child. This is time consuming for the respon-

dents. Furthermore, it is derived that most respon-

dents want to know about the schools’ performance

and current news, followed by JAIS announcements,

current school statistics, and lastly annual calendar.

That is why most of the respondents want a one stop

center that can help them track down schools, while

school owners can register their schools and higher

ups can do any approval necessary to manage Selan-

gor Tahﬁz schools.

After a pilot test of the system, it can be de-

rived that the system searches allow parents to view

the schools’ environment, curriculum quality, perfor-

mance, number of students, and many more attributes

and whereabouts before deciding on the best Tahﬁz

School to enroll their children in. They can rely on the

information provided by the system, as all the schools

listed are also registered under JAKIM, PINTA and

PITAS. Since the database is the main key to the

transparency of the system, this ensures that the re-

port generated are precise and can be put to measure.

However, there were some difﬁculties and constraints

faced during the completion of the paper. The main

limitation is that there are some unregistered schools

that cannot be identiﬁed and that some of the data ob-

tained also are redundant. Therefore, it took time to

sort the data before they can be applied in the system.

This was important as the data cleaning will ensure

the highest data integrity and reliability.

5 CONCLUSION

In conclusion, it is found that the Tahﬁz Selangor

School system can collect all the data and informa-

tion ﬁlled by the users and analyze it. A complete se-

ries of all the Tahﬁz Selangor schools can be collected

and analyzed for further reporting by JAIS. The online

system created also helps parents search and identify

schools immediately rather than looking for unorga-

nized information that have been segregated all across

the internet. The system can help parents track down

the schools and display the correct information of all

the schools, while also allowing the Tahﬁz owners to

process and approval.

Therefore, this paper is important in improving the

growth of Tahﬁz School management and improve

both client’s and customer’s experiences. What par-

ents fear are sending their children to a school that are

not recognized by JAIS and the Selangor state. There-

fore, by having a heuristic series of each Tahﬁz school

in the database, parents can be rest assured that the

schools listed can receive help and aid when the need

arises. Besides that, the results discuss will impera-

tively help society especially parents to ﬁnd the best

Tahﬁz school for their children through the advance-

ment of data tracking. Data tracking has helped the

advancement of so many businesses and organizations

in this global age. Therefore, if the Tahﬁz schools

can be easily located, they can grow dynamically with

other SMART schools in the Selangor state and in

Malaysia. Other than that, this paper is also crucial in

the development of a SMART Selangor state and also

proves that Tahﬁz and Huffaz are dynamically follow-

ing the ﬂow of technological advancement, hence in-

creasing growth of the country’s social and economic

sector.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This work was supported by Geran Penyelidikan &

Pembangunan Sains, Teknologi Dan Inovasi (STI)

Kerajaan Negeri Selangor.

ICCETIM 2019 - International Conference on Creative Economics, Tourism Information Management

102

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