Understanding the Problem of Education Inequality in Malaysia
Introduction
Malaysian government had put effort in National economic policies, a higher education policy that advantages the Bumiputera was incorporated in public policies and development plans. Malaysia school enrollment rates, particularly at the secondary and tertiary levels, have increased dramatically. Malaysian efforts at increasing education can be seen from the remarkable increase in the average years of schooling as below: [2]
I am partly agreed with the statement that education inequality due to many isolated Malaysia rural schools’ students are not aware of scholarships and grants available to them.
There are certainly gap between urban and rural schools for educational accessibility and other factors and I would like to discuss on how to help the rural school students to get the information and the aspiration to further their studies and achieve their goals for their future and eliminate education inequality.
Rural-Urban gap
The actual situation that is happening within the Malaysian education system that surprises me is some of the rural students who have been given the privilege of access to good education but are not aware of the reality of the scholarship & grants in Malaysia.
Some might be aware of the issue but they might not have interesting and incentives to it and the cause to such problem is only limited to the gap in quality and accessibility of education between rural and urban area.
Orang Asli primary school students dropout rate (did not completed study until Standard Six) was 5. 04 per cent in 2016, 3. 99 per cent in 2017 and 0. 73 per cent at year 2018.
The secondary school student dropout rate among Orang Asli community increased year by year with 36. 35 per cent dropout in 2015, 40. 01 per cent in 2016, 42. 90 percent in 2017 and 51. 06 per cent year 2018 in kampong Gajah, Perak. [5]
Rural schools face higher teacher shortages, dangerous or longer journeys to school, and receive an education that is lacking in comparison to their city school. [3]
I would agree that rural-urban gap is one of the factors contributing to education inequality.
Socio-economic class
This is biggest reason that leads to this social disparity. Lower-income families are confronted with educational disadvantages. Parents income has a direct correlation to their children academic achievement. Students from poor families demonstrate poorer academic performance compared to students from higher-income families. Schools with more low-income students also tend to fall in the categories of Band 6 and 7 schools [4].
The parents with higher income tend to send their children to extra tuitions classes and lessons and provide a lot of support and motivation due to their general awareness of the importance of education. Contra to this, low income parents are constraints in their efforts to provide such assistance due to economic circumstances, their children might have to go for work straight away after finishing their primary school or secondary in order to ease their parents’ burden to support their families. This prevents them from pursuing a higher level of education and attaining more knowledge for their future.
Also, these students do not have any role models to look up in their community as most of them comes from the similar low-income family background. Sometimes hardship could not be a motivation.
Rural students have lost hope of continuing their education due to family financial reasons. Some of them are confused and do not know what actually their talents are.
The underlying issue of psychological weakness, social exclusion and a purposeless life is a treat to our fellow rural children.
They enrolled for certain courses which were not interested in. They accepted the course as it was the only option offered by the government sponsor public university or college but dropped out half way when they could not cope with the course.
The education system of segregation, tagging and inequality
The reason why many students need extra tuition is because our system of education is exam and result-oriented and is based on memorization rather than on an analysis-based system which would encourage more critical thinking and leadership.
Some rural students often enroll to do courses at public tertiary institutions that they are not interested in, leading to high drop-out rates for this particular group.
In general, the education system in Malaysia tends to class students according to their grades. This marginalization of students with lower academic credentials is a major contributor to the inequality in the education system.
Geographical factor
The academic achievement of students in rural areas is lower than the students in urban areas. The achievement gap between students in different geographical areas is significantly large, despite the improvement over time.
Among the reasons to explain these situations include the lack of availability and access to facilities such as tuition classes, computers and internet connection as well as the lack of experienced good teachers.
For instant, the English proficiency, the rural teachers who speak good English find their command of the language has been deteriorated because the chances they are using it less, and at a more basic level. Highlighting how urban students benefit from exposure to workshops, talks, and interactions with industry people, all these also help motivate them to speak English.
The chances that a teacher would move in and willing to teach in a low socio-economic status rural area school is much lower than a high socio-economic status urban area school.
Relationship between economic growth and educational equality
The relationship between school inequality and economic growth is when inequality in schools increases, the average GDP per capita of our country would then decrease. Drop in average GDP per capita means that the average income of a family decreases, making the poor families become poorer. This results in a bigger gap of education inequality due to socioeconomic reasons as previously mentioned. This bad cycle will repeat, forming the poverty cycle. Statistically, when inequality within primary education increases by 1%, the average GDP per capita would decrease by RM149 whereas it would decrease by RM323 for secondary education, due to different subjects being taught in both primary and secondary schools.
Subjects taught in primary schools are Reading, Writing and Mathematics which are the basic skills only. Subjects like ‘Kemahiran Hidup’ taught in secondary schools are likely to prepare the students to our national labour market demand. Therefore, it explains the lower average GDP per capita’s drop as a result of inequality in primary schools.
Malaysia’s industrialisation policy has moved our national’s economy from agriculture to technology dependent which requiring skilled labour force.
Department of Statistics, Malaysia
The relationship between economic growth and school quality is investigated using the following regression: [7]
Where PCGDP is per capita gross domestic product in 1987 prices (base year), GPS is primary school inequality, GSS is secondary school inequality and Pop is the number of population who is in the age of 0-14.
Education inequality is directly linked to poorer economic growth. The education inequality leaves a very negative impact to our country. Education is important in increasing the human capital in the economy.
Conclusion
Gap between rural school and urban school can be solved by improving the said poor school infrastructure and facilities at Perak (Kampong Gajah) or Sarawak which ranked very low in Malaysia public examinations. Since we cannot have equalisation of education but we can practice positive relocation of teachers, in which additional better teachers can be assigned to rural schools.
The rural schools should well equipped with computers, internet connections. Malaysia has 10,000 schools nationwide in year 2014. The Ministry of Education (MOE) recognizes the large gap between students studying in urban cities and those in rural areas. Following a proof of concept that combines technologies from VMware and Teradici, Bitara Induk, a leading Information Communication Technology systems integrator, has been awarded by the Malaysian government to deploy 25,000 seats of VMware Horizon virtual desktops and Teradici PCoIP zero client devices as part of a national program to bring digital learning to 1,250 rural schools across Malaysia.
The above deployment gives students access to high-quality computing and digital education resources, and also, as part of an effort to modernize education and bridge the digital divide between rural & urban areas.
The Ministry has established an vision for preschool through university education that aims to improve the educational outcomes for 6 million students at 10,000 schools nationwide, advance the country’s overall competitiveness in the global labor market and bring educational parity to urban-rural schools. [8]
However, geographically I am sure that there are still a lot of dedicated teachers being willing to relocated themselves in rural areas school.
The Distance Learning Programs (DLP) should ensures that children have access to the best learning experience, more crucially that teachers that in rural schools, are well-trained.
Rural students can master with the DLP, but they just need more encouragement and the opportunity to take part in the programme.
In rural DLP schools, teachers who are better trained in dealing with students who not information technology savvy and not exposed to the use of internet. Even if they have access to the Internet, they need to learn how to use it. Students must be motivated to improve their skills.
Malaysia’s geography always a significant challenge for educators who aim to reach all students in urban and rural areas. Malaysia’s 14 states divided into two main islands and a number of smaller islands in the Sea of China, and access to information and communications technology (ICT) varies significantly depending on the proximity to a major city and its surrounding. In the Malaysia Education Blueprint, 2013-2025, the Ministry of Education defined the strategic and operational shifts required to bridge the urban-rural digital divide in the country’s school districts and promote uniform, quality learning for all schools.
Successful implementation of this resulting initiatives need overcoming of the considerable challenges as below:
In rural and inland areas, infrastructure limitations make it difficult to access the Internet; solar electricity, diesel powered generators and VSAT satellite links are the only power and connectivity resources in some remote area.
ICT budgets are different. In urban areas, commercial partners contribute equipment and supplies, but at remote sites must rely solely on government funding. IT staff are not located at every school site.
Technology deployments must be easy; remote administration, management and troubleshooting is a priority requirement.
However, working closely with Teradici and VMware, enhancing the way teaching and learning happens in Malaysia, even under the harshest environmental. The enthusiasm among teachers and students throughout this first phase of deployment is an indicator, the Government investment in virtual desktops will pay off a bright future for the country’s school children. [9]
Social economically, cash awards and scholarships should be given to excellent rural students, this would be a inventive to rural schools and encourage students to do better in their studies. Students from poorer backgrounds need to be supported financially and need to be made aware that there are scholarships and grants available to them.
We need to ensure students from a poor family background are financially supported through Zakat, tabung haji, private bank, government organization like MARA/JPA. If this work is done, we would have fewer dropouts of rural students at secondary and university level. Malaysia needed a revolutionary education system that is rooted in equality and solidarity.
Financial support could also take the form of discounts on accommodation or books, for example, while some universities might load money on to a prepaid card that you can only spend on certain things.
Students can focus on the studies and participate in extra-curricular activities, which not only keep fit and healthy but also help them improve social integration skills.
The Education system of segregation, tagging and inequality has led to teachers tend to focus on students with better academic achievement and weaker students are usually neglected.
The average student in current education system fails in reached the competence in basic skills such as reading, mathematics and science. Malaysia’s education system is unnaturally low in quality according to OECD cross-country surveys on the scores of primary and secondary school students in basic skills.
Malaysia’s next catching-up process requires that economic growth be knowledge-led and not just capital-led. The post-1970 New Economic Policy (NEP) produced a large group of middle class citizen through economic centralisation. But the decentralisation is needed to enable Malaysia knowledge-led growth out of the middle-income trap and to spread the fruits of economic growth more fair and equally. Reform of the education system is urgently needed.
The education system also needs to change from memorisation and to concentrate on giving students the critical skills needed by employment market.
A good education system should be able to identify the talents of the students and to cultivated them to become a more constructive and skilled members of society, instead of being neglected until the students abandon the education system usually in secondary school.
In view of this would require a spiritual sense of solidarity in observing, engaging and identifying the talents of these youths. This would help our young students to have a sense of purpose that is beyond the individualistic sense of self-absorption we find among many youths today.
In the Quran, Allah quotes “Indeed, Allah loves those who fight in His cause in a row as though they are a [single] structure joined firmly. ” which implies that we should work together so that bigger things can be achieved. Similarly, the late
John F. Kennedy to illustrate his belief for improving the situation by inviting the community to join his reform movement: “Divided, there is little we can do. ”
It is our responsibility who are able to study in universities, collages whether sponsored or self-funded, to help eradicate our country education inequality crucial problem.
