KUCHING: There is an apparent resistance amongst the state assemblypersons and parents of students with regards to the merging of schools.
Hence, Minister of Education and Solidarity, Dato’ Sri Michael Manyin Jawong held a session with the Parti Pesaka Bumiputera (PBB) ADUNs at Imperial Hotel, yesterday.
“The main objective today is to table recommendations made by the Education Department to ADUNs after conducting a research for approximately three weeks.
“One of the key issues addressed is to merge and centralise schools which have low number of students.
“After today, we will start to engage parents especially in rural areas with all of these dilapidated schools in order to get their feedback on centralising schools.
“Their main concern is sentimentality and nostalgic values. We have been trying to reason this out for a long time already to address this issue,” said Manyin in a press conference after the meeting.
Currently there are 1,004 schools in the state, with fewer than 300 students, and another 651 schools are having fewer than 150 students.
“As proven, the size and the environment of a school matters and affects the performance of its students. Its size will definitely determine how much resources they will receive.
“Therefore we need to merge schools so that resources, educators, facilities can be provided efficiently and will also enhance the performance of our students at the same time,” said Manyin.
Sarawak is now ranked 13th out of all the states in Malaysia in the overall public examination performance and Manyin aims to achieve better in the future.
“We need a good environment so that we can teach our students effectively especially on Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM).
“If not, Sarawak is left with no doctors or engineers in the next 10 years’ time,” said Manyin.
Also present during the press conference were Minister of Welfare, Community Wellbeing, Women, Family and Childhood Development Datuk Fatimah Abdullah, Assistant Minister of Education Dr. Annuar Rapaee and Permanent Secretary to the Ministry of Housing and Urbanisation Datu Sudarsono Osman.
