At a time when students are being given access to digital tools to learn, create and solve problems, there is a more fundamental question to consider: what happens when they cannot read, write or count?
The challenge is not merely hypothetical.
In 2024, the Education Ministry identified 122,062 Year One students who needed intervention to develop basic literacy and numeracy skills or 3M – reading, writing, and counting.
According to Deputy Education Minister Wong Kah Woh in a report by The Star last year, 72,385 – or 59.3% – of the 122,062 Year One students identified through early literacy and numeracy screening had mastered the 3M in 2024, while the remaining 49,677 were to undergo a special remedial programme in Year Two.
According to Haslina Abdul Malek, primary schools typically have a remedial teacher who provides additional support to students struggling with reading and writing in Bahasa Melayu, as well as numeracy skills in Mathematics.
“The classes in remedial programmes provide a more focused approach with smaller groups of around five to 15 students per teacher. Once students demonstrate the required level of mastery, they can return to the mainstream classroom and continue learning alongside their peers,” says Haslina, who is the chief engagement officer for social enterprise Chumbaka.
While being placed in remedial classes may affect some students’ confidence as they learn separately from their peers in mainstream classrooms, Haslina shares that teachers strive to create a more nurturing and engaging environment to support their learning.
The social enterprise’s chief executive officer Dr Chew Yen Seng explains that, in a vast state like Sarawak, not every student has the opportunity to begin their education at the preschool level, “particularly for students in the kampung or rural areas”.
“So teachers will also face the challenge of helping the students catch up to master 3M once they enter Standard 1,” Chew adds.
Wong has shared that the challenges in ensuring Year One students master the 3Ms are not limited to pedagogical factors, but are also influenced by socioeconomic circumstances, student readiness and the home environment.
Tapping digital tools
In 2024, the Education, Innovation and Talent Development Ministry in Sarawak partnered with Chumbaka to pilot the use of Kayam School, a digital learning app designed to support students in remedial classes, across 40 rural schools.
“We are a STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics)-focused social enterprise, but when the ministry approached us about this initiative, they raised an important question: What is the point of STEM education if children cannot read or write? That prompted us to look at how we could help improve literacy and numeracy among the students affected,” says Chew.
The following year (2025), Chumbaka was appointed as the Sarawak 3M implementer for Program Anak Kita, a nationwide initiative by the Education Ministry and Finance Ministry driven by Pantau Madani and Yayasan Hasanah. Program Anak Kita Sarawak was rolled out to 204 schools across 30 districts, with more than 2,700 tablets provided to participating schools to give 8,114 students access to the Kayam School app.
According to Haslina, Kayam School features interactive content that allows students to practise Bahasa Melayu and Mathematics.
“Kayam is an Iban word for ‘play’, to match how the app is a classroom tool to assist them with learning in a fun way. When they complete a lesson like plus or minus in Maths, they get rewarded with stars in the app,” she adds.
There are two ways for students to approach learning on the app. Haslina says they can follow a standard lesson plan that starts with the basics, such as learning to write the alphabet, before progressing to more advanced lessons, including forming sentences and reading.
“Teachers can also use it purposefully to achieve a certain objective so they can set the exercises at a certain level for the students,” she adds.
As they learn and complete the work, teachers will be able to track their progress and use the data to identify areas where students may need additional support.
“The app records students’ learning behaviour as they work through each lesson, including how long they take to complete a task and whether they meet the learning objectives and required standards. This gives teachers a clearer picture of each student’s level of mastery and the skills they have yet to develop,” says chief technology officer Chong Zhi Xiong.
By looking at this data, Chong adds that teachers can identify gaps in a student’s learning and determine where additional support or practice may be needed, rather than relying solely on test scores or completed work.
“What we’re seeing is that some teachers use the stars to create a leaderboard in the classroom and encourage them to work towards improving their skills,” he says.
Chong shares that Kayam School was not developed from scratch. Instead, it was based on Kitkit School, an open-source learning app that won the Global Learning XPrize in 2019, an international competition aimed at finding innovative ways to improve children’s access to education.
“The open-source app didn’t have a data-logging feature, so we added that,” says Chong.
Haslina adds that Chumbaka developed the Bahasa Melayu learning module and also built the data dashboard to help teachers make sense of the information collected through the app.
“In the dashboard, there are AI-powered inputs that provide suggestions on how to support students based on their learning patterns. Ultimately, it is up to the teacher to decide what to do with these suggestions, drawing on their own knowledge and understanding of the classroom. The AI is there to help save teachers time by processing and making sense of the data,” says Haslina.
Winning combination
Data is also becoming an increasingly important part of the classroom, with the Education Ministry announcing in 2025 that it had enhanced its Sistem Pengesanan Murid KPM (SiPKPM) with AI to help identify students at risk of dropping out.
According to a Unicef report, the system flagged students at risk of dropping out in 2025, enabling targeted interventions that helped more than 9,000 students return to school, including 3,287 girls. The system analyses each student based on seven indicators, including attendance, academic performance, disciplinary records, learning needs and household circumstances. It then identifies students at risk of dropping out and alerts counsellors, teachers and district officials so they can intervene early.
According to Haslina, simply providing access to technology, such as devices and AI-powered apps, is not enough. Teachers also need guidance as well as support on how to use these tools effectively and consistently, so that the data collected can provide meaningful insights.
“Teachers are encouraged to use the Kayam School app for between 15 and 30 minutes in the classroom, four times a week. It’s important to maintain consistency and support the students when they are using the app. If they are working towards helping the students exit the remedial class by the end of the year, then they need to work on some strategies and can turn to the data for assistance,” she adds.
Chew acknowledges that introducing technology into the classroom comes with its own challenges.
“There was a risk that students might end up spending too much time on the tablets. Hence, we recommend limiting their use to between 15 and 30 minutes. The technology is meant to serve as a supplementary tool, not a replacement for teachers,” he says.
Chumbaka says the initiative recorded a 67.2% exit rate from remedial classes among the 8,114 participating students in 2025, allowing them to rejoin their peers in mainstream classes. This exit rate exceeded the 60% target set for the initiative by the Education Ministry and Finance Ministry.
“We feel encouraged seeing the numbers. But we want to be mindful here. It’s not the app that allowed us to achieve that as we want to attribute it to what the teachers have done with the app as an alternative learning tool.
“The progress of the students is highly dependent on the teacher’s dedication for them as the app alone can’t do miracles,” says Haslina.
