Education: Towards a Fairer and Equitable Malaysia

Tis the time of the year when offers for residential and technical schools are out. Things have changed very little from my school days. From among my Malay colleagues, I noticed a sizable number with their children offered places in residential schools; be it science or MARA colleges. And also, quite a sizable of them have children in Matriculation which also translates to subsequent placings in overseas universities.

It is common knowledge that a place in Science schools would mean a better chance of securing a loan or scholarship locally or overseas to pursue a course of their choice later. It also means an easier path to Matriculation, which is also another easy path to local universities as its standard is very much lower than that of STPM. Matriculation vs STPM... that is also another much debated issue.

In comparison, I know very few of my non-Malay friends with children in the above scenario. But I might also add that, perhaps from among my friends, most of us are not quite for sending our kids at secondary level as we feel that kids should be with their family in their formative years. But that is another subject for another day.

Now, my colleagues and I basically belong to the same economic group. You can't help but feel that these same people are taking the opportunities from the more deserving ones. There are many more Malay students ... as well as non-Malay students who need that extra help... where taking them away from their home environment would bring about a positive change in their lives. Yet many of these places are given to those non deserving cases; kids whose parents make 5 figure salary monthly.

What then are the criteria for selection? If we go by results, then obviously 30-40% of the students in residential schools should be non-Malays, in proportion to the population. If we go by the economic criteria, then what are these middle to upper-middle income kids doing in such schools? These schools are built with the tax-payers money. The places should be fairly and equitably distributed. And that is where it glaringly shows the double standards that has always been a practice in this Bolehland.

There has been suggestions that a single school system is good for racial integration but the idea is drawing protests from the those who are for the vernacular education system... rightly so too cos distribution of places is not done fairly be it according racial or even economic lines.

In order for a single system to work, a fair and equitable policy must first be seen. But as in many things Malaysian, we still practise our own version of apartheid......