Malaysia’s Education System: Think of Implementation, Not Top-down Blueprints

The Malaysia Education Blueprint (Pre-School to Post Secondary Education) 2013-2025 and Malaysia Education Blueprint (Higher Education) 2015-2025 are approaching their end dates. The two far-reaching plans were premised on Malaysia’s need for a seamless policy that outlines coherent, continuous and consistent aspirations in education. Nearly a decade after their launch, it is time to revisit and reevaluate them.

The Blueprint was first launched in 2013. Shortly after higher education was subsumed under the Ministry of Education (MOE), this led to another blueprint specific to higher education. Hence, the two Blueprints have identical aspirations. At a systems level, they have similar aspirations pertaining to areas such as access, quality, equity and efficiency. At the student level, they share similar goals such as knowledge, thinking skills, language proficiency and national identity. The major difference is in the “Transformational Shifts”, which are key areas for implementation and accompanied by tangible and measurable outcomes.

Minister of Education Fadhlina Sidek, while launching the 2022 Blueprint annual report, claimed that the School Blueprint was a success. However, shortly after, reports arrived that Malaysia had suffered its biggest drop in PISA performance in 2022 (the test is prescribed in the Blueprint as a major indicator of education quality). The Sijil Pelajaran Malaysia (SPM, Malaysian Certificate of Education) is another major indicator of progress, but the 2023 results of this 11th-grade school leaving examination also painted a mixed picture. The number of straight-A students increased, and the national average grade improved. Yet, 10,000 students were no-shows for what may be an important examination in their schooling journey, and a third of students failed at least one subject. The failure rate for mathematics ranked the highest, at 25 per cent.

Similarly, after a decade of implementation in higher education, some universities have successfully attained higher rankings, but pressing issues remain. Malaysian universities continue to grapple with graduate unemployment and underemployment, school leavers who prefer gig jobs rather than continue their studies, and integrity issues of academic and financial misconduct. Hence, there is a need to contextualise the indicators of the Blueprints with the latest developments in education, and explore the incorporation of new, unforeseen, and more dynamic targets.

The current practice, as announced by Minister of Higher Education Zambry Abdul Kadir and also by the Ministry of Education, seems to continue with a “top-down” approach. While suggestions are solicited from the public and experts, this practice seems performative as both ministries are set on producing blueprints for which schools and institutions are then expected to implement.

An alternative merits serious consideration. Through the Malaysia MADANI framework, Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim should reaffirm the holistic, humanistic, and comprehensive vision of education for Malaysia, as articulated in the Falsafah Pendidikan Kebangsaan (FPK, National Education Philosophy) and rooted in the ambitions and principles of the Rukun Negara (National Principles). Guided by the national vision, various ministries should prepare drafts of implementation plans outlining how Malaysia can enhance and strengthen what it is doing right in specific parts of education. Equally crucial is the need to remove and overcome barriers that hinder.

… a one-size-fits-all and ‘top-down’ blueprint from a single ministry would not work. Instead, a range of differentiated implementation plans and strategies, which clearly outline the involvement of the communities, schools and parents, unified by a single national vision of education, are essential for education in Malaysia to prepare for the future.

Complete drafts of implementation plans should be presented for public consultations to secure buy-in by outlining the role and involvement of all actors and stakeholders, including the local community and parents, and even beyond institutions operated by the ministry. Instead of a performative practice of seeking suggestions from the public as to what should be included in the Blueprint, their inputs should be grounded on specificities to which all stakeholders — local communities, parents, teachers, schools, and institutions — can decide and participate in the implementation process. These inputs must be considered before the implementation plans are finalised and executed.

This alternative approach to implementation is urgently required in three key areas of Malaysia’s education. First, the pre-school system has been the most neglected part of education in Malaysia. Although mentioned in the School Blueprint, the enrolment rate for early childhood education remains at 75 per cent. There are problems associated with quality as well as access. This sector is the most under-resourced and undervalued part of education, as reflected in the lower-than-average remuneration of educators compared to other sectors with significantly higher private participation.

Second, the Malaysian school system is over-centralised and over-bureaucratised. Putrajaya oversees the curriculum and pedagogy, operational decisions, and resource allocation for more than 10,000 schools, 400,000 teachers, and 4.8 million students across Malaysia. Can this structure support personalised, differentiated, and individualised learning for all children? One option is the devolvement of controls to schools and teachers by involving the local community, and concurrently, strengthening the quality of teaching and learning. This should include scaling up the Sekolah Amanah (Trust School) project, strengthening the professional development of educators, and empowering school leaders to nurture a localised culture of learning in schools.

Third, the current paradigm of post-secondary adopts one common framework, where the boundaries of university education and TVET seem blurred. Instead, the post-secondary system has a dire need to be differentiated. The process of training in TVET and learning in universities should not be discussed in the same breath, as they are two distinctive paradigms. Hence, this requires autonomy for institutions as well as appropriate nudging of incentives toward meeting the diverse needs of learners and contexts.

For instance, although some TVET institutions like technical universities and polytechnics are under the same ministry as universities, the former should focus on job competencies specific to an industry. This needs to explore integrating training and work beyond a typical university-like structure and modalities. Conversely, learning in university ought to develop a range of capabilities and knowledge beyond mastery in a specific discipline, job, or industry. Additionally, if education is a continuous process as envisioned by FPK, life-long and life-wide learning, as well as re-skilling, un-skilling, and up-skilling, would require an entirely different structure beyond the single formal post-secondary education system.

Thus, a one-size-fits-all and “top-down” blueprint from a single ministry would not work. Instead, a range of differentiated implementation plans and strategies, which clearly outline the involvement of the communities, schools and parents, unified by a single national vision of education, are essential for education in Malaysia to prepare for the future.

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