About Taman Pendidikan Raihan

Our Vision : Iqra, embracing literacy and beyond

 

Our Mission: To provide young children with an enriching early learning experience in a caring, safe, creative, fun and nurturing environment, laying the foundations for a successful future fiddunia wal’akhirat

 

We are an established but growing educational centre dedicated to serving the community since 1967. Our focus has been to develop intelligence through early reading as the thrust of our pedagogy. However, in 2015, our focus has become more Islamic-based to meet with the needs of parents in the vicinity.

 

Taman Pendidikan Raihan @ Tadika Raihan was established in 1967 by pioneering early childhood educationalist, Dato’ Dr ( Hon) Nooraihan bt Dato’ Amar Sallehuddin*.  In the early ‘60s, Dr Nooraihan developed a highly effective early reading method, called ‘terus membaca’.  This phono-syllabic method became a phenomenal success in the Philippines, where it was adopted by the Ministry of Education nationwide.

 

To propagate her method at home, Dr Nooraihan set up Raihan in the garage of her home in Petaling Jaya, to prove to the sceptic Malaysian community in the late ‘60s, that children CAN read at an early age easily. This skill enables them to achieve success in school and beyond.

 

From a mere 5 children in 1967, Raihan reached its peak with 200 children in the 1970s at its bigger premise in Section 12, Petaling Jaya.  Currently, our focus is on more individual attention, with a lower teacher to student ratio.

 

Raihan has produced thousands of ‘graduates’ over its 52 years who are now in a variety of professions . Many ‘graduates’ are from ivy-league universities such as Oxford and Cambridge in medicine and economics. However, we also have ‘graduates’ who have ventured into non-academic film directing, broadcasting and literary fields, winning accolades in their respective area.

 

The majority of our current students enter ‘sekolah kebangsaan’. However, a minority enter private institutions including international schools.

 

People ask us why do we only have one centre in Petaling Jaya, no branches. This is in line with the aims of our founder who wanted to focus on expanding her method of reading, terus membaca to the masses, particularly to the rural & urban poor. KEMAS and Kementerian Pendidikan Malaysia have implemented this method and  a 10th edition is underway to meet the current trends in education.

 

Apart from being a testing ground for the terus membaca method, Raihan’s approach is eclectic, taking the most appropriate to meet the needs and budget of the parents who send their children to the centre. A creative, cheerful, loving and positive environment is vital in nurturing young children for the future, so all staff and members of the Raihan team must reflect these qualities.

 

* Her documented work can be found in Arkib Negara Malaysia