ACCESS to education is a key to escaping poverty.
Cognisant of this, Prime Minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim said a new type of school targeted specifically at students from hardcore poor families is in the works.
The idea of the school sounds promising but certain aspects must be in place in order to reach its purpose, namely, bringing these children out of poverty, say stakeholders.
Teach For Malaysia research, design and impact manager Sawittri Charun said it is vital to have approaches that first and foremost acknowledge the realities of growing up in challenging circumstances.
“Children from disadvantaged backgrounds are more likely to enter school with lower levels of school readiness – they may not have acquired adequate early literacy or numeracy skills and may not have developed learning skills,” she told StarEdu.
With some unable to attend any form of preschool, Sawittri said these students will enter the schooling system already behind their more advantaged peers.
She added that when schools apply a one-size-fits-all approach without taking action to address the gaps in foundational skills experienced by disadvantaged children, the children will almost certainly fall behind further each year as content gets more complex and foundational skills, such as basic literacy and numeracy, are needed.
She stressed that care must be taken to acknowledge the challenges experienced by disadvantaged children.
“The way we support the children to meet learning outcomes is not by lowering our expectations, but by increasing and differentiating the type of support provided,” she said.
The school that is in the pipeline needs to give the children plenty of out-of-school learning opportunities, such as learning trips, workplace visits and participation in camps and competitions outside of school.
These trips, she said, are something children from more advantaged backgrounds experience.
“For example, educated parents tend to actively seek and provide enriching educational experiences for their children.
“These are all valuable to shape a child’s learning and development,” she said, adding that giving disadvantaged students access to experiences not only widens their knowledge of the world, but also develops soft skills, self-efficacy and their ability to pursue their interests.
Sawittri also said the school must be driven by high-quality teaching and leadership.
“Working with children who have experienced tremendous hardships in the early years comes with its own challenges, and therefore the teaching faculty must also be deeply committed to the cause,” she added.
Earlier this month, Anwar said a new type of school targeted specifically at students from hardcore poor families is being considered.
The school, he said, will be based on the framework of science-based secondary and fully residential schools (SBPs) catered for the target group.
“Access and opportunities must be given fairly to allow them not to be left behind,” he said during a “Temu Anwar” session at the Penang Matriculation College on Aug 5.
In response, Education Minister Fadhlina Sidek said on Aug 10 in a Bernama report that her ministry will try to get the pilot school running by next year.
She also said her ministry is fine-tuning a special model that focuses on issues closely related to poverty, aid channels and support to the school ecosystem before a strategic location for the school is determined.
Agreeing with Sawittri, Buku Jalanan Chow Kit co-founder and Yayasan Chow Kit advocacy officer Siti Rahayu Baharin said the curriculum needs to be designed and tailored to the specific needs of the poor.
“But it must not be designed to have ‘less’ than what is taught in the mainstream syllabus, just because it is for the poor.
“It should be the best curriculum, best co-curriculum and have the best inside and outside classroom activities that would support not just the children’s academics, but also their livelihoods,” she said.
She said the foundation applauds the government’s efforts to provide good quality education for children, especially the marginalised.
“We are all about improving the quality of education or helping the poor, but it needs to be done in a way that would not further marginalise the children,” she added.
She also said the foundation is willing to lend its expertise to the planning committee or advisory board for the formation of the school as it has had about 13 years of experience in providing very poor and marginalised children around Chow Kit, Kuala Lumpur, with a space where they could seek refuge, eat and sleep, and get involved with basic educational and health activities.
Universiti Utara Malaysia College of Arts and Sciences School of Education senior lecturer Dr Muhammad Noor Abdul Aziz said the school should prioritise engaging and motivating the students to study, besides providing for their basic needs such as food, clothes and school supplies.
“Recent research shows that many students, including the B40 community, have dropped out of school due to a variety of reasons and it is primarily an engagement issue.
“They do not feel like they belong in the school,” he said, adding that the syllabus should also be revisited so that the students can absorb it better.
He also said placing students from poor families in the school will be good so long as care is taken to educate them and bring them out of the poverty cycle.
Not everyone, however, is on board with the idea for such a school.
Universiti Malaya Centre for Research in International and Comparative Education director Assoc Prof Dr Vishalache Balakrishnan said she does not believe there would be any positive outcomes, except when these students are being removed from unsafe or unconducive environments and placed in a boarding school.
“Unless the B40 students need to be taken out from their current places of living due to an unsafe environment like drunkard or drug-addict parents, mothers or sisters who are sex workers (and bring their customers home daily) and other extreme cases, these students should be living in safe hostels but going to the normal schools like any other children,” she said.
She said if such a school is established, society would start to sympathise with these students and their agility to survive might die off.
Instead, the government should focus on the weakness of the current mainstream schools, which already have inclusivity policies, and transform these schools.
“If such students are in the normal mainstream schools, they will survive by bringing out their best and not living in sympathy,” she added.
“Inclusive education, which the whole world is going towards, will become exclusive if we go ahead with this school,” she added.
Citing a Unesco report in 1994, she said regular schools with an inclusive orientation are the most effective means of combating discriminatory attitudes, creating welcoming communities, building an inclusive society, achieving education for the majority of children, and improve the efficiency and ultimately the cost-effectiveness of the entire education system.
An alternative suggestion, said Vishalache, is to emulate a programme carried out in a school in Sao Paulo, Brazil, where students from families with poor or troubled parents stay on the grounds after school and are educated with life skills, such as bakery, gardening and hairdressing, and fun skills, such as dancing, singing and drawing.
There is another school in Missouri, the United States, where students from poor families stay back after the dismissal bell rings to play games, sports or do projects which they excel in.
This model that is carried out daily, she added, also sees the students being given lunch and teatime meals.
“It is more important to have special links to help and support the B40 society, and teach them how to survive,” she added.
People like options and this school should fully adopt the Dual Language Programme (DLP) to give these children the choice of whether they would like to study Science and Mathematics in English. It would also make it easier to absorb information available on YouTube and other online platforms, which are mostly in English. But the poor communities should not be put together and enveloped in a cocoon of poverty mentality. In fact, they should be exposed to other communities in order to broaden their outlook towards socio-economic opportunities, cultures, lifestyles and values.
Parent Action Group for Education Malaysia (Page) chairman Datin Noor Azimah Abdul Rahim
The real problem for many of these students is not because they are poor, but because they lack access to an education. Instead of placing all these children into one school, which could be psychologically and mentally unhealthy, the government should improve their accessibility to schools. Give them free transport, monthly subsidy for school supplies, an Internet connection and digital devices. Better yet is for the Education Ministry to improve the present mechanism that is used for students applying for fully residential schools and Mara Junior Science Colleges, to ensure only those truly deserving are enrolled in the schools. I hope the ministry has done enough research and collected enough data on the need to have such a school.
Melaka Action Group for Parents in Education (Magpie) chairman Mak Chee Kin
