Primary School Enrollment Drops

In the midst of all the debate regarding higher education in Malaysia, we musn't forget that other aspects of educational policy are important as well. This recent report in the Star caught my attention. It referred to the "Education For All (EFA) Global Monitoring Report 2007" issued by UNESCO which noted that 'Malaysia lost ground in its primary education enrolment during the period under report, falling from 98% in 1999 to 93% by 2004'.

I've always assumed that Malaysia had achieved 100% (or almost 100%) primary school enrollment rate for quite some time. The fact that this % has dropped to 93% is certainly worrying.

According to the EFA monitoring team's policy analyst Dr Nicole Bella, 'She said this could be attributed to the increase in the number of children of school-going age, as the total enrolled in primary education nationwide had remained the same, at about three million.' In other words, the number of children attending primary school has not changed by much but the number of children of primary school going age has increased.

It highly likely that the drop in primary scholl enrollment is due to children from marginalised families not attending school. Indeed, the report cites as much - 'In Malaysia’s case, it cites the difficulty of attracting and retaining marginalised children as a reason for the high number not reaching the last primary grade or moving on to secondary school.'

But my question is this - if 'at risk' or 'marginalized' children were attending primary schools previously (when enrollment was at 98% or higher), why are less of them attending primary school now? Have there been changes to the economic condition of marginalized families which have forced parents to take their children out from the primary school system? Are these marginalized children more likely to be from immigrant families who don't have the same expectations of sending their children to attend primary school as other Malaysians do?

Although not discussed often in this blog, the statistics for drop out rates after Primary Six and after Form 3 are pretty scary especially for a country that has aspirations to become a fully developed nation by 2020.

A consequence of this will be a growing section of an 'underclass' which will be denied ample employment opportunities and might be forced into illegal activities such as crime and drugs.

There are no simple, clear cut solutions to this complex problem but a good start would be to identify the symptoms and causes of why such a phenomenon is occuring and why it is becoming more serious.