I spent 30 years of my life in school. When I was six years old in the 1970s I was placed in a kindergarten roughly 30 miles from Sibu town. After that I went to SRK Batu 15 followed by SMK Batu 15 Jalan Oya roughly about 15 miles from Sibu town in the early 1980s. These are all rural schools.
I still remember vividly my experience of going to these schools. Both my primary and secondary schools are about 30 miles away from my house. My mom would wake us up at 4am and by 5am we would get on a lorry with a makeshift roof provided by my dad’s employer. It was our main transportation to school. Every school-age child in my area used it to go to school.
Each trip took us about two hours to and fro because the roads were so bad, making the journey very unpleasant and even dangerous at times especially during bad weather. We knew the lorry was not meant to transport human beings, but we never complained, even when we got wet when it rained. Our primary school was not too bad as it was located in the compound of an army camp, but our secondary school was terrible!
I remember clearly the condition of my classroom and hostel from Form 1 until Form 3. There were no windows and doors – only gaping holes where they should have been. So when it rained (depending on which direction it came from) we moved our wooden tables and chairs to the other side of the classroom. However, when the rain came from all directions, we gathered in front of the classroom until the rain stopped.
The floor made loud squeaky noises every time we walked. The classroom building was on wooden stilts about 12 feet off the ground to avoid the flood waters, and also to avoid crocodiles and snakes from a nearby river which often overflowed during the monsoon seasons.
Our classroom building was only a stone’s throw away from a dusty main road, so everything was covered with dust. On dry days, clouds of dust would rise up in the air and shrouded our building whenever huge trucks carrying earth or rocks or logs passed by.
There was no fan and very few light bulbs in the corridor and classroom. We had the absolute basics – one big green board, chalks, wooden chairs and tables. Still, I was quite grateful for having a table and a chair (though not a few were rickety) as I used to sit on hard cement floor in kindergarten. It was nothing to shout about, but at least it was an upgrade of sort in my naïve, young mind.
Somehow the loud noises from the main road never bothered us much, maybe because we got used to them. Sometimes, when the noises got too loud, our teachers would momentarily stop our lessons until the noises died down.
Our main supply of electricity was from a small diesel generator which ran for only a certain number of hours a day.
Our hostel was a wooden one and very cramped. There were no proper beds or mattresses. We had no treated piped water even though the school was only 15 miles from the nearest town. We survived on rainwater gathered in huge tanks – one placed near our hostel and the other next to the school kitchen. During the drought season we carried water from a nearby river for bathing and washing. Our drinking and cooking water was brought by government tanker trucks.
We had more than enough water during the rainy seasons, but the downside was most of us could not wear our school shoes because the muddy school compound made them dirty. It was too much work to keep them clean!
Our teacher’s quarters were also wooden ones and modestly built. However, we never heard our teachers complaining. Their patience and perseverance seem to be out of this world!
I consider myself lucky because during our English lessons, our teacher made it mandatory for everyone to converse in the language. In addition to that, our Mathematics and Science were taught in English, which made learning English a little easier. Conversation wise, I compare it to climbing Mount Everest! We conversed in English only during the lessons which were only two hours a day. Other times, we conversed in our own languages or dialects, which was (and still is) the norm in rural schools.
So, when I went to a city high school, I found myself in a real pickle. My extremely difficult struggle made me felt let down by the education system which failed to prepare me for the predicament. For the first time in my school life, I was put in a class where a majority of my classmates were from better schools. Their English was superb; their knowledge of science and mathematics was more advanced and they were more self-assured, which put them in an advantageous position compared to most of us who were from rural schools.
My rural friends and I didn’t do well that whole year because we were so overwhelmed by our new environment. Most of us felt out of place. It took us more than a year to catch up with our urban classmates.
In spite of that we thought that we were fortunate to have the opportunity to pursue our education in an urban school which has better learning environment, more trained teachers, well-equipped science labs, larger libraries, more exposure to related educational activities, and so on.
Unfortunately, several of my classmates did not have the same opportunity. They ended up not pursuing further education after SPM because so much hardship and bad learning environment (such as dilapidated school buildings and facilities) caused them to lose their motivation.
That was in the early 1980s. Unfortunately, the situation described so far persists to this day in rural Sarawak.
The state has about 1,020 schools categorised as dilapidated or critically dilapidated and need to be repaired or rebuilt if effective teaching and learning is to take place.
The situation has gotten so bad that some school buildings are not even safe for occupation. Lessons are regularly interrupted because there is no electricity supply. A majority of rural schools still depend on small power generators. Currently, 371 schools are still without electricity. The state Minister of Education, Datuk Seri Michael Manyin, said as of July last year about 428 schools in Sarawak are still without treated water supply. In addition, 721 schools have no proper roads with 200 of them only accessible by rivers or sea. In September 2017, Deputy Chief Minister Tan Sri James Masing attributed low enrollment in rural schools to their extremely unacceptable conditions.
Moreover, lack of internet connectivity in rural areas also affects class activities which are related to e-learning. Even if there is connectivity, it is very bad.
News about dilapidated schools in rural Sarawak and lack of money for them from the federal government has been highlighted by local newspapers for a while now. Some of the issues have been raised by Sarawak MPs in Parliament since the late 1970s. The complaints were mainly about lack of electricity and treated water, roads, dilapidated school buildings, hostels, halls and teacher’s quarters and the list goes on and on. Yet very little has been done. In the end, everything boils down to ringgit and sen and political will.
The state government blames the federal government for lack of political will in resolving the issues because education is under the purview of the central government. The state government also perceives the federal government’s failure to provide the fund as failure to deliver on its promises to Sarawak.
There is no quick fix to the issues, yet a major improvement is needed if Sarawak wants to produce highly competitive and skilful human capital that can actively participate in the global economy and become architects of the future development of Sarawak. The federal government should do its utmost to address the issues as Sarawak’s educational and infrastructural development has long been neglected.
The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the New Sarawak Tribune.
