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Prof Dr James Chin: No, the UEC controversy won't end. Right-wing Malay groups oppose it mainly because the UEC uses Mandarin as the main teaching language and it serves mostly the Chinese community. They will still argue UEC is threatening the status of Bahasa Melayu as the national language and national unity. Madani understands this. it's a political issue, not about improving education quality. In fact, forcing official history adoption will make things worse. These textbooks push political indoctrination by heavily promoting the idea of a "social contract" that locks in divisions between bumi and non-bumi. It creates and maintains two permanent classes of citizens, with state privileges for one group, making the other group feeling politically inferior. The idea is to brainwash both bumi and non-bumi from a young age.
UG reforming education system?
https://www.tiktok.com/@johnnysoon9393/video/7582207721030667540?is_from_webapp=1&sender_device=pc (Abang Jo on why Sarawak recognises the UEC)
KUALA LUMPUR, Jan 21, 2026: Do you really think the so-called Madani Unity Government (UG) really wants to reform the education system?
Of course it is! Reforming the system to go down south!
Malaysia’s 10th Prime Minister (PMXAnwar Ibrahim had the chance to show he and UG really mean business when he reshuffled the Cabinet.
Instead, the NATO (No Action Talk Only) PMX retained Malaysia's worst-ever performing Education Minister Fadhlina Sidek.
This is her “excellent” performance in supporting/defending moronic educators:
As long as Malaysia’s education policies remain race-based (kulitfication) and not merit-based, Malaysia’s education performance and quality of graduates (human capital) will only sink deeper and deeper into abyss.
View the above video and judge for yourself Sarawak Premier Abang Jo’s simple explanation/logic why Sarawak has recognised the Unified Examination Certificate (UEC) compared with the racist and religious bigoted politicians in West Malaysia.
No News Is Bad News reproduces below on Malaysia’s education free fall compared with others in Asean:
Sarajun Hoda
Key PISA 2022 Findings (vs. 2018):
Mathematics: Dropped from 440 to 409.
Reading: Dropped from 415 to 388.
Science: Remained relatively stable (438 to 435).
ASEAN Comparison: Ranked bottom among ASEAN countries in all three subjects, behind Vietnam, Singapore, etc..
NST Leader: Broken education system
January 24, 2024 @ 12:00am
As the government embarks on a denial-cure journey, we suggest it begin with the end of education in mind. - NSTP file pic, AI-generated image.
HERE we are again talking about an ailing education system. While Singapore emerged a world-leader in the latest Programme for International Student Assessment's (Pisa) ranking in mathematics, science and reading, Malaysia ranked fourth in the 10-member Asean region.
Pisa, a triennial assessment of 15-year-olds, ranks the ability of the students to apply thinking and reasoning processes to solve complex real-life problems. Should we be surprised with the dismal results? Not at all. Anecdotal evidence of this has been, well, evident, for years. Strengthening this are numbers crunched by Emir Research, a Malaysian think tank.
As high as 13 per cent of pupils in upper primary schools are not proficient in reading and 50 per cent of 15-year-olds — the Pisa candidates — have a reading capability below their level. It is not uncommon, too, to find Form One students being unable to read.
How they got through six years of schooling without being able to read remains an unsolved national puzzle. It happened in the 1960s — though the numbers were low — and is happening now.
Prime Minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim thinks this and other afflictions are a result of a denial syndrome among those tasked with educating the nation. Our worry is that it is this and more.
Start with the denial syndrome. There is a disconnect between schools, education departments and the ministry. They — the people who man the ministry and education departments — know the malady, but refuse to seek a cure for it. To them, the sickness is with the students, teachers and schools.
The prevailing thinking is that the ministry and the education departments are deficiency-free. A classic case of this involved mathematics teacher Mohd Fadli Mohd Salleh, who was threatened with disciplinary action when he pointed out the flaws in the education syllabus.
He was subsequently freed of all charges, but not until a good portion of the nation rallied behind him on social media, crying "go sir, go". "To sir, with love" was more than a movie in Malaysia of 2022. But taking students from crayons to calculus as teachers like Cikgu Fadli do is but a cog in the wheel of the Malaysian education system.
Now for the "more" — a broken education system. We have had 10 governments and they have done 10 different things. Call it the problem of democracy.
Every government will do what is politically expedient, not necessarily to produce good human beings, which is the true end of education. As the government embarks on a denial-cure journey, we suggest it begin with the end of education in mind.
Our 15-year-olds must not only be able to solve complex real-world problems of the Pisa variety, but they must also be of good character. A good education system will not only educate the mind, but also the heart. Both are lodged in human beings, who are the object of our education system. Educating one without the other is not only inadequate, but dangerous.
True, educating the mind will produce the smartest students in the classroom. But educating the mind and heart will produce students who are wise, ones who are able to tell the difference between what is right and what is wrong. If we get this right, we would have solved most of our Malaysian maladies, including the broken educatiSorry state of education in Malaysia
Updated 1 year ago · Published on 2 Jun 2024 3:07PM · 1 Comments
ON May 27, the SPM results were released. It was reported that 11,713 candidates scored straight As. The Education director-general and the state education directors were elated as the national average grade was higher than in 2022 and 2021. Sixty-six subjects saw higher grades, 25 lower, and four were unchanged.
I don’t like to spoil the party, but were the results in harmony with the 2013-2025 Education Blueprint, the TIMSS and PISA findings of 2022, and the World Bank Report in April 2024?
The Education Blueprint is the result of extensive research and public engagement with the following objectives:
* Understanding the challenges to improve access to education, raising standards, closing achievement gaps (equity), fostering unity among students, and maximising system efficiency.
* Establishing a clear vision and aspirations for individual students and the education system as a whole.
* Outlining a comprehensive transformation programme, including key changes to the ministry to meet new demands and expectations and to ignite and support overall civil service transformation.
The National Education Philosophy, written in 1988 and revised in 1996, is the government’s vision of education for the intellectual, spiritual, emotional, and physical development of Malaysians.
In 2011, we spend at 3.8% of GDP on education. In 2022, we spent 3.5% of GDP. For 2024, the allocation for education is RM75 billion, or 19% of the budget.
PISA 2022 results our students fared the worst in reading. We finished 51st amongst 81 countries. After spending so much, why did we fare so badly?
The blueprint targets a top three position for Malaysia, but we are close to the bottom third. The curriculum should focus on teaching subjects in depth rather than breadth, yet we have 95 subjects for the SPM exam. It should also be structured and designed to encourage students to develop critical thinking and problem-solving skills. Students who perform well in reading, mathematics, and science tend to apply critical thinking skills.
Socio-economically advantaged students outperformed disadvantaged students in mathematics. The World Bank report in April 2024 showed poor teacher preparedness and a lack of robust performance tracking systems contributed to poor educational outcomes. Forty percent of students fail to achieve reading proficiency in Standard 5, higher than in other countries with similar gross national incomes per capita. Students spend an average of 12.5 years in school but learn the equivalent of only 8.9 years. In Vietnam, students spend an average of 12.9 years and learn the equivalent of 10.7 years, while Singaporean students spend 13.9 years and learn the equivalent of 12.8 years.
School supplies
Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim himself said the state of education in the country is the “worst in Asean”.
In 2023, only 15% of SPM students were in the pure science stream, a decline from 43% in 2002. Seventy percent of students find mathematics and science hard to comprehend. Subjects with the highest percentage of A results 2343 Pendidikan Al-Quran dan Al-Sunnah and Usul Al-Din. Subjects with the highest percentage of failures were additional mathematics and mathematics.
The decline is worrying as we aim to become a high-income and globally competitive country.
What is the status of the blueprint now? Was it drafted in the context of economic development or in isolation? Where is the focus on students, and what about the teachers who deserve special attention? How is their recruitment process? Do they get quality training? What about personal and professional development?
We are on dangerous grounds and must act urgently against poor policy execution, lack of accountability, and the politicisation of education. There must be holistic improvements rather than selective achievements. – June 2, 2024.
* Saleh Mohammed reads The Malaysian Insight.
* This is the opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of The Malaysian Insight.
".... In 2023, only 15% of SPM students were in the pure science stream, a decline from 43% in 2002. Seventy percent of students find mathematics and science hard to comprehend.....the highest percentage of failures were additional mathematics and mathematics...."
Until the mid seventies, a lot of Malaysian secondary school students, on their own initiative, study maths TWO years ahead, eg form 4 students study A-levels maths.
That was why Malaysia then was a magnet for E&E foreign investors, ie the Bayan Lepas FTZ.
Now the government had to fork up billions to JAKIM to placate discontented unemployable youths!!!!
And foreign investors BYPASS Malaysia!!!
Frankly Speaking: Education overhaul needed, now more than ever
29 Jan 2024, 11:30 am
This article first appeared in The Edge Malaysia Weekly on January 29, 2024 - February 4, 2024
The Malaysian education system is again under the spotlight, with Prime Minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim himself calling the state of education in the country the “worst in Asean”.
His remark came on the back of the falling trend of Malaysia’s scores in the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). In the latest PISA ranking, Malaysia came in 51st globally, out of 81 countries and economies assessed.
In Southeast Asia, Malaysia’s PISA score for Mathematics fell from 440 points in 2018 to 409 in 2022 — behind that of Brunei, Vietnam and Singapore. In Science, Malaysia scored 416 in 2022, down 22 points from 2018, while its score in English reading fell 27 points.
Clearly, Malaysia’s education system is sliding, although the overall PISA scores show that the country is still ahead of Thailand, Indonesia, the Philippines and Cambodia. However, as Malaysia aims to become a high-income nation, the decline is worrying.
Where did we go wrong? The country must do a lot of soul-searching in order to get the education system back on track. After all, a good education system will produce the much-needed human capital for an innovative and advanced economy.
One of the key issues that the government must straighten out is the Dual Language Programme (DLP). The DLP, which allows the teaching of Science and Mathematics in English in schools, must be enshrined in the Education Act 1996.
Education Minister Fadhlina Sidek has said that the implementation of DLP must ensure that the opportunities for other students to learn science and mathematics in the national language or mother tongue are not affected. Hence, students should be proficient in both languages.
However, Sarawak’s Deputy Minister I for Education, Innovation and Talent Development, Datuk Dr Annual Rapaee, last week called for the amendment of the act to ensure every Malaysian student is proficient in both Malay and English.
By amending the law, the DLP cannot be changed willy-nilly, whenever there is a change either in federal government or at the helm of the Ministry of Education.
The work towards reforming the education system must start now.
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