Education in Tawau, Malaysia

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Educational Development in Malaysia: Meeting the Challenges of National Integration Seminar presented by Associate Professor Anna Christina Abdullah

INTRODUCTION • Malaysia occupies the southernmost peninsula of Southeast Asia and the northern one-third of Borneo. • It became a nation on September 16, 1963 when Sabah and Sarawak joined Malaya which had earlier gained independence from the British on August 31, 1957 to form a single federation. • Malaysia has a democratically elected government with a constitutional monarch.

Population (26,640,200) • Malaysia - multi-ethnic population consisting of native (bumiputera) and ‘immigrant’ (non-bumiputera) ethnic groups. • Malays - main indigenous ethnic group. The main ‘immigrant’ groups -Chinese and Indians • Bumiputeras 65.1% (2000). • Chinese 26.0 % • Indians 7.7 %

A - Primitive and Feudal Period
(35,000BCE-1786)

Primitive and Feudal Period (35,000BCE-1786)
• The first human beings arrived in East Malaysia around 35,000BCE and in West Malaysia around 25,000BCE.
• On the peninsula, the aboriginal people are collectively known as the Orang Asli.
• The modern Malays are the descendents of the Deutero-Malays – an amalgam of many early ethnic groups including Indians, Chinese, Siamese, Arabs, and Proto-Malays. During the 13th century, a great maritime kingdom called Srivijaya emerged in the Malay Archipelago. However, as other ports emerged towards the end of the 13th century, Srivijaya’s influence declined and paved the way for the Malays to emerge as the dominant power in the Malay Archipelago.
• Malacca was founded in 1400 by Parameswara, a prince from Sumatra. The strategic location of the port of Malacca at the narrowest part of the Straits of Malacca allowed it to control the lucrative spice trade. Revenue from port taxes and services greatly enriched Malacca. Muslim traders from Arabia and India brought Islam to Malacca. Soon after establishing his kingdom, Parameswara converted from Hinduism to Islam

• Malacca fell to the Portuguese in 1511.
• The Dutch defeated the Portuguese and conquered Malacca in 1641
• After that it was the British who colonized all of Malaysia.

Primitive and Feudal Period (35,000BCE-1786)
• Education during this period was typical of feudal societies. Only members of the royalty and nobility had the benefit of formal education that prepared them for ruling the masses.
• Education for the rest of society was largely of an informal nature involving the passing down of traditional life skills from generation to generation.
• However, the Islamic clergy established a small number of Qur’anic schools or pondok for the purpose of religious education.

B	B - The British colonial period (1786-1957)

The British colonial period (1786-1957)
• Captain Francis Light of the British East India Company convinced the Sultan of Kedah to allow them to build a fort in Penang, an island off the northwestern coast of the Malay Peninsula in 1786.
• Penang, Malacca, and Singapore collectively came to be known as the Straits Settlements.
• The main concern of the British was to maintain peace and order to facilitate the exploitation of the economic resources of Malaysia, especially tin and rubber.
• The British encouraged mass immigration of workers from China and India to work in the tin mines and rubber plantations respectively. Rapid urban development took place during the booming colonial economy.
• The Malays remained in rural areas; the towns were dominated by the Chinese and a minority of Indians who eventually controlled commerce and industry.

Colonial period can be divided into 3 phases:
• 1786 – 1941 Laissez faire (divide and rule)
• 1941- 1945 (Japanese occupation)
• 1945 – 1957 (after Japanese occupation)

1786-1941: laissez faire
• During the colonial period, four types of schools existed – English schools where English was used as the medium of instruction and three types of vernacular schools, viz., Malay, Chinese and Indian.
• Christian missionary groups also established English schools in the major towns. English education was the best as it consisted of both primary and secondary levels and students could further their education until university level in England or at the Raffles College in Singapore.
• Although the colonial government did not feel the need to build schools for the masses, for the Malays at least, the British felt some form of obligation to provide a basic form of education designed to teach them to be better able to carry on in subsistence farming and fishery as well as to develop habits of punctuality and good behavior in order that they not disturb the peace.

• The Chinese community actively established their own schools and imported curricula, teachers and textbooks from China.
• The Indians, on the other hand, were left at the mercy of the rubber plantation owners. Plantation owners who built schools for the children of their workers only saw it fit to provide a rudimentary form of terminal primary education in dilapidated buildings.
• The best education was available in English schools. More non-natives were able to benefit from English schools than natives.
• The quality of Malay, Chinese and Indian vernacular schools was generally poor and the curricula focused on their respective motherlands. Thus, the population became divided, and remained so for more than 150 years.

1941-1945. Japanese occupation of Malaysia
• too brief to have had much impact on education in Malaysia.
• the defeat of the British at the hands of Asians shattered the myth of white superiority and led to a surge of nationalism in colonial Malaysia.

1946-1957. After the Japanese Occupation
• the British propose formation of Malayan Union.
• The Cheeseman Plan, which advocated primary and secondary education in the four existing languages – English, Malay, Chinese and Tamil.
• Chinese and Tamil language teaching were to be made available in the English schools, and at the same time the teaching of English was to be made compulsory in all vernacular schools.

• Malay nationalists organized mass protests against the Malayan Union and demanded independence.
• The Cheeseman proposal was abandoned in 1949 with the demise of the Malayan Union.
• The Barnes Committee was set up in 1950 to look into reforming and integrating the educational system.

The Barnes Report (Malaya 1951a)
• recommended that all existing schools should be transformed into National schools in which children of the various ethnic groups would be taught through the medium of Malay and English.
• Not surprisingly, the Chinese saw the Barnes Committee proposal as an attempt to eliminate their languages and cultural identities and protested vehemently against it.
• To appease the Chinese, another committee called the Fenn-Wu Committee was formed in 1951. It was sympathetic towards Chinese vernacular education and recommended a bilingual policy where Malay and English would be used as media of instruction, but at the same time provisions would be made for the learning of Chinese and Tamil in schools.

The Report of the Central Advisory Committee (Malaya 1951b)
• took into consideration the collective wisdom of the Barnes and Fenn-Wu committees.
• Its recommendations formed the basis for the Education Ordinance of 1952 in which a bilingual national system of education with a common curriculum was established based on only one type of school – the National School.
• Malay and English were placed on an equal footing as media of instruction in the national school but Tamil and Chinese were taught as third languages.

C	C - Early Independence (1957-1970)

Early Independence (1957-1970)
• The Razak Report and the Education Ordinance of 1957. The Report of the Education Committee, 1956 (Malaya 1956), popularly known as the Razak Report was the government’s educational blueprint for post-independence Malaysia to create a national education system aimed at fostering national integration. The Razak Report resulted in Malaysia’s first legislation on education as an independent nation – the Education Ordinance of 1957.
• There are two major differences between the education ordinances of 1952 and 1957. Under the former, Chinese and Tamil vernacular primary schools existed outside the national education system but under the latter, such schools were integrated within the national education system as national type primary schools. Thus, the 1957 Ordinance favored the interests of the non-bumiputeras more than the 1952 Ordinance.

The Rahman Talib Report and the Education Act of 1961
• Committee set up to review implementation of the Razak Report.
• little progress in implementing the use of the Malay language as the main medium of instruction in Malaysian schools and phasing out English-medium schools.
• The Report of the Education Review Committee, 1960 (Malaya, 1960) resulted in the Education Act of 1961.
• The most significant outcome of the Education Act of 1961 was that a definite timetable was set to phase out English medium schools and convert government-aided Chinese-medium secondary schools into Bahasa Melayu medium secondary schools.

D	D - Socio-Economic Reengineering Era (1970-1990)

Socio-Economic Reengineering Era (1970-1990)
• Non-bumiputera domination of the economy accelerated after independence resulting in increasing interethnic tensions which culminated in the violent inter-racial riots of May 13, 1969.
• The government launched a 20-year plan in 1970 called the New Economic Policy (NEP) to regulate and restructure the economy. In particular, ownership of equity capital of bumiputeras, nonbumiputeras and foreigners would conform to a ratio of 30:40:30.
• In the restructuring of the corporate sector, the share capital of bumiputeras increased from 3 percent in 1970 to 18.5 percent in 1985 and 20.3 percent in 1990.

Impact on educational policies
• A racial quota system was set up for entry in tertiary education. Other preferential practices - construction of elite fully residential schools for bumiputeras and the near total bumiputera monopoly of government scholarships.
• During this period the national language policy laid down by the Rahman Talib Report was implemented without any further delay; nor was it resisted by the non-bumiputeras

	Key milestones in the implementation of the Bahasa Malaysia policy
1970	1970 The phased conversion of English-medium national type primary schools to Bahasa Malaysia-medium national type primary schools was started in the first year of primary school
1975	1975 The conversion of English-medium national type primary schools to Bahasa Malaysia-medium national type primary schools was completed
1976	1976 The phased conversion of vernacular and English national type secondary schools to Bahasa Malaysia-medium national type secondary schools was started in the first year of secondary school
1981	1981 The conversion of vernacular and English national type secondary schools to Bahasa Malaysia-medium national type secondary schools was completed. The use of Bahasa Malaysia as the medium of instruction in the first year of all university degree programmes was started.
1983	1983 The use of Bahasa Malaysia as the medium of instruction in Form 6 was completed.
1985	1985 The use of Bahasa Malaysia as the medium of instruction in Malaysian universities was completed

The Report of the Cabinet Committee to Review Educational Policy (1979).

• to recommend steps to improve the implementation of the Education Act of 1961. In particular, the Committee was charged with reviewing the existing primary and secondary school curricula.
• The Mahathir Report:
• primary school curriculum too content-heavy; unbalanced development of the individual child. More attention to the development of basic literacy and competency skills and moral and spiritual values.
• The New Primary School Curriculum, now called the Integrated Primary School Curriculum, was introduced in 1982 as a pilot project in 302 schools. In 1983 KBSR was implemented nationwide. To maintain curriculum continuity the Integrated Secondary School Curriculum was pilot tested in 1988 and implemented nation-wide in 1989.

E	E - Liberalization and Globalization Era (1990-the present)

Liberalization and Globalization Era (1990-the present)

• Although the aim of carving out a 30 percent share of the economy for the bumiputeras by 1990 was far from being achieved, the government decided that enough momentum had been built up to justify the easing of government regulation of the economy.
• In 1991, the National Development Policy (NDP) was launched which allowed for a limited liberalization of the economy.