Over 3,000 primary schools under-enrolled nationwide

PUTRAJAYA: A total of 3,017 primary schools in the country are categorised as under-enrolled, with fewer than 150 pupils each currently, says Deputy Education Minister Datuk Dr Mah Hang Soon.

This involves 2,034 national schools (SK), 616 vernacular Chinese schools (SJKC) and 367 vernacular Tamil schools (SJKT). There is a total of 5,877 national schools, 1,302 SJKC and 527 SJKT.

"The under-enrolment situation is serious and needs a quick solution to identify the root cause of the problem.

"This could be due to socio-economic change, demography, the passage of time and so on," he said at a press conference after chairing the SKM SJKC working committee meeting here on Wednesday (Sept 7).

Mah said the newly-formed committee would focus on the issue at SJKC. In future, its scope would be extended to the national schools and SJKT if the results of the study could be applied in both streams.

"Three sub-committees will be formed which, among other things, are responsible for interacting and collecting information from the schools' board of governors.

"Also, providing reading materials and programmes to improve the quality of teaching and learning, and conducting a comprehensive study to identify the problems causing the state of under-enrolment at the SJKC ," he added.

He also did not discount the possibility that the study would also look into the aspect of merging the under-enrolled SJKCs.

"That was one of the things we discussed earlier. We had to take into account the feelings of the community towards the merger issue and look at it comprehensively," he said, adding that the committee would convene after three months to present the results of the study. – Bernama