PAGE is a feisty 15-year-old

By the end of this month, the Parent Action Group for Education Malaysia, affectionately known as PAGE, will have conducted its 15th annual general meeting, having been registered as a national society in 2010.

The tragedy that has stunned the country — also known as #JusticeForZara — has become the lowest point ever for any education minister. Meanwhile, PAGE has been invited to be part of the Educational Institutions Safety Reform Committee (EISRC), which held its inaugural meeting last month. We hope this is a sign from Minister of Education Fadhlina Sidek of wanting to collaborate, communicate and engage with PAGE on such issues.

My initial feedback to EISRC is that, in the past, influential parents of bullies who are either donors to the school or politically connected persons have succeeded in persuading the principal to drop the case, leaving the victim with little choice but to leave the school. And the cases go on.

The fictional drama series Projek: High Council (2023) and its prequel Kahar: Kapla High Council (2024), although perceived as innocent, are apparently acted out by students in residential schools because they are seen as “cool”. The drama series was inspired by real-life issues and a true story about an underground gang that operated in a Malaysian residential school in the 1990s. While it was intended to highlight bullying, peer pressure and corruption in residential schools as a public awareness exercise, it may have backfired and actually triggered more “high councils” to be emboldened and empowered.

Our heart goes out to students whose deaths were related to bullying, namely T Nhaveen, an 18-year-old who was viciously attacked by a group of youths in Penang in 2017; Zulfarhan Osman Zulkarnain, a navy cadet and third-year electrical engineering student at the National Defence University of Malaysia (UPNM) who endured brutality and torture by fellow students in 2017; Nazmie Aizzat Narul Azwan, a 17-year-old vocational college student who was beaten to death in his dormitory last year; and helpless 13-year-old Zara Qairina Mahathir whose inquest is ongoing.

The body of Syamsul Haris Shamsudin, a 22-year-old Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM) Reserve Officer Training Unit (Palapes) cadet who died during military training in July, has been exhumed and undergone a second post-mortem to provide clarification on conflicting accounts of how he died. Meanwhile, the family of the late Wan Ahmad Faris, a Form Four tahfiz student found dead in a school toilet in 2013, recently submitted a memorandum to the Kelantan government.

Days later, PAGE was again invited by the education minister for a budget dialogue. I took the opportunity to propose that funds be allocated to focus on and expand the Dual Language Programme (DLP).

PAGE’s proposal to the minister is this: In line with the 13th Malaysia Plan (13MP), the target of improving the nation’s position in the Global Competitiveness Index requires attention to be given to education. One of the areas of achievement that enables this advancement is a focus on STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics). Sarawak has taken steps to do so, and the whole of Malaysia must also align with this direction. The strengthening of DLP involves various efforts such as syllabus enhancement, continuous teacher training, the provision of suitable learning resources and administrative support to ensure the programme achieves its objectives. Efforts to strengthen DLP and enable access to it must be increased. The offering of DLP classes, schools and options should be expanded. Therefore, update the DLP guidelines, maintain the number of fully DLP schools, respect parents’ choices and ensure fairness and equity in DLP options, and increase the number of teachers and enhance their skills for DLP teaching and learning.

Thus, taking the matter of DLP to the Parliamentary Special Select Committee (PSSC) on Nation Building, Education and Human Resources Development is a move that has not been forgotten but instead is timed for optimum impact. In 2024, the DLP guidelines were altered by the minister to impose one mandatory non-DLP class whether or not parents had opted for it, thus going against the spirit of DLP.

The students, now in Years One and Two and Forms One and Two, were put in the mandatory non-DLP classes because they were not proficient in Bahasa Melayu (BM). Thus, having been taught science and mathematics in BM, they have supposedly improved their proficiency in BM. Now that BM proficiency has improved and will continue to improve over a period of three years, students should now be given the option to request to be in DLP classes as they approach Year 4 and Form 4 respectively.

If students’ BM proficiency has not improved over the crucial period of three years, then was the minister wrong in imposing the mandatory non-DLP class by thinking that such a move would improve BM proficiency?

PAGE has, from the start, held the belief that if students’ BM proficiency is poor, then tackle that rather than taking away DLP from them. Share the data and the impact study with us as proof that non-DLP instruction improves proficiency in BM. If BM proficiency has not improved, what is the minister doing about it?

The minister needs to win the hearts and minds of parents or continue to face our wrath.

The Edge