10 March 2010

Options in Malaysian education

Posted by DAVID BC TAN under: Malaysian schools.

The Nutgraph is running a 4-part series on education in the country. The third installment by Deborah Loh which comes out today examines the growing interest in homeschooling. You’ll find comments by the usual suspects, meaning KV Soon of Family Place, and yours truly, as well as Hafizah who runs the Malaysia Homeschool Unite forum.

Of particular note is a comment by the education director-general, and both KV and my response to him:

(T)he government has no intention of recognising home schooling, says education director-general Datuk Alimuddin Md Dom. “It’s just a minority of people doing it. There are also other political aspects to consider like racial harmony. When children home-school, they miss the socialisation process of mixing with different races,” he tells The Nut Graph.

But Soon and Tan rubbish claims that home-schooled children are poorly socialised. Home school families often get together for educational activities and field trips where their children interact. Additionally, Tan questions whether racial harmony in public schools has been achieved. “Society has become more polarised after so many years of ‘socialising’ in regular schools,” he observes.

Read the rest here.

In the first installment, writer Koh Lay Chin looks at the number of parents sending their kids to private schools as indicative of growing disenchantment with Malaysia’s public education (but of course!) and asks what in the present system caused the shift:

For certain, the statistics indicate that a significant number of Malaysians seem to be losing faith in Malaysia’s public school system.

For instance, there is clearly growing demand for private education. The number of private kindergartens, for example, went up from 263,307 in 2004 to 668,287 in just two years, according to statistics from the Education Ministry’s Private Education Department.

Enrolment in international schools, meanwhile, rose from 5,069 students in 2000 to 8,341 the following year.

And within seven years, the number of students enrolled in private primary schools nationwide increased more than 22% from 7,234 students in 2000 to 16,190. [Read the rest here]

The second installment comments on the popularity of Chinese medium schools among Malaysian parents, and even among those who are non-Chinese. The article quotes Chinese educationist Dr Kua Kia Soong who said:

“[The increased interest in Chinese-medium schools] is more of an embarrassment to the government because it aims to attract all races to the national schools but more and more Malay and Indian [Malaysians] are going to Chinese schools.”  [Read the rest here]

The series has been an interesting read not just for what it says about the declining appeal of public education in the country (we know that), but about how life always finds a way!  For what it’s worth, it does appear to mirror something I had previously posted entitled, Between a Rock and a Hard Place which surveyed present options for unhappy parents with school-going kids.

Parents are seeking out options – whether private or chinese-medium schools, or homeschool – and indeed, options are out there either by default or by design.  While we hope that our government will ‘do something’ about the state of affairs in our schools, we need to know that governments can’t do everything, and shouldn’t do everything. Careful, there be dragons, going down that road. Besides, as a commentator wrote, “for the moment and probably the next twenty years, a bulk of our government servants are not going to be able to meet quickly the demands of society.” With things the way they are, this will include most if not all our  government institutions.

Make sure to visit The Nutgraph and follow the series. And yes, do add your 2-sen to the discussion.

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