The Ministry of Education (MoE), Malaysia launches English Mania in KidZania, the pilot phase of the first-ever English based learning experience programme for students and teachers at KidZania Kuala Lumpur.KidZania is an indoor family education and entertainment centre, which offers an interactive learning and entertainment experience targeted at kids aged 4 to 14 years. KidZania combines role-play with real life, creating a kid-centric city experience designed to educate and inspire kids; from arriving at the airport, to visiting a city centre to exploring the city streets. As in the real world, kids choose activities – such as being a police officer, doctor, journalist or a customer – and earn money, which they can then spend or save. KidZania operates just like a real city complete with buildings, paved streets, vehicles, a functioning economy, and recognisable destinations in the form of “establishments” sponsored and branded by leading international and local brands. The facilities are designed to educate through experience, fostering the development of life skills, but from a kid’s perspective it is all about fun.

English Mania in KidZania is a programme designed for both students and teachers to enhance and encourage the use of the English language in classrooms. Besides providing an enjoyable learning platform for students to learn English, the programme leverages on KidZania’s unique role-playing concept and also equips and inspires the teachers to be more creative and imaginative in their teaching delivery.

Students will have their wildest dreams come true by playing in KidZania Kuala Lumpur on a school day! However, the students are in fact assisting their teachers by collecting data through role-playing some of the over 100 professions available in KidZania. This data will then be shared with their teachers at the end of the program to assist them in designing fun and educational role-play based activities back in the classroom.

While the students experience the city of KidZania Kuala Lumpur, the teachers will attend a one-day training session conducted by appointed facilitators from the MoE together with KidZania’s in-house trainers. The course brings them through the concept of ‘edutainment’, which is a portmanteau of education and entertainment, to make learning more enjoyable through playing. Teachers will also learn about educational role-play and how it aids child development, complements out-of-classroom teaching, and supports existing school curricular.

English Mania in KidZania is sponsored and organised by the Co-curriculum and Arts Division, Ministry of Education, Malaysia in partnership with KidZania Kuala Lumpur. The two-day pilot phase is targeted at 32 schools around Klang Valley and Putrajaya, reaching over 1100 students and 100 teachers. Once the pilot programme has completed, teachers will need to submit a report to the MoE recording their experience with their students and measure their students’ learning outcome towards the success of implementing role-play and hands-on activities in the classroom. The MoE will then review the reports to formalise the roll-out of the full programme.