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Education in Malaysia

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Education spending usually makes up about 14 per cent of the annual national budget, the biggest allocation among all. The education system in Malaysia is divided into five stages: preschool education, primary education, secondary education, post-secondary education and tertiary education. It is further divided into national and private education. Education may be obtained from the multilingual national school system, which provides free education for all Malaysians, or private schools, or through homeschooling. International and private institutions charge school fees. By law, primary education is compulsory since 2003. Secondary education is expected to be compulsory, with the relevant amendment bill tabled in July 2025. Standardised tests are a common feature as in many Asia-Pacific countries such as the Republic of Korea, Singapore and Japan. Currently, there are 20 public universities, 54 private universities, 39 private university colleges, 10 foreign university branch campuses, 331 private colleges, 36 polytechnics and 105 community colleges in Malaysia.

History

Origins

Sekolah pondok (literally, "hut school"), madrasah and other Islamic schools were the earliest forms of schooling available in Malaysia. Early works of Malay literature such as Hikayat Abdullah mention these schools indicating they pre-date the current secular model of education. Some madrasah came under the control of state religious council, which continue to this day.

British colonial period

Many of the earliest schools in Malaysia were founded in the Straits Settlements of Penang, Malacca, and Singapore. The oldest English-language school in Malaya is the Penang Free School, founded in 1816, followed by Malacca High School, St. Xavier's Institution, King Edward VII School (Taiping) and Anglo Chinese School, Klang. Many traditionally English-language schools are considered quite prestigious.

British historian Richard O. Winstedt worked to improve the education of the Malays and was instrumental in establishing Sultan Idris Training College with the purpose of producing Malay teachers. Richard James Wilkinson helped established the Malay College Kuala Kangsar in 1905 which aimed to educate the Malay elite.

Initially, the British colonial government did not provide for any Malay-language secondary schools, forcing those who had studied in Malay during primary school to adjust to an English-language education should they have the opportunity to commence secondary education. Colonial reports affirmed that the limits of Malay to only primary level education are intended merely "to make the son of the fisherman or peasant a more intelligent fisherman or peasant than his father had been". Many Malays failed to pursue additional education due to this issue; even Sultan Idris Shah I of Perak criticised the intended effect of this policy's design as such during the 1903 Conference of Rulers. Despite these high-profile criticisms, the British Director of Education stated:

It would be contrary to the considered policy of government to afford to a community, the great majority of whose members find congenial livelihood and independence in agricultural pursuits, more extended facilities for the learning of English which would be likely to have the effect of inducing them to abandon those pursuits.

Malay representatives in the Federal Council as well as the Legislative Council of Singapore responded vehemently, with one calling the British policy "a policy that trains the Malay boy how not to get employment" by excluding the Malays from learning in the "bread-earning language of Malaya". He remarked:

In the fewest possible words, the Malay boy is told 'You have been trained to remain at the bottom, and there you must always remain!' Why, I ask, waste so much money to attain this end when without any vernacular school, and without any special effort, the Malay boy could himself accomplish this feat?

To remedy this problem, the British established the Malay College Kuala Kangsar in 1905. However, it was mainly intended as a way to educate low-level civil servants and not as a means to opening the doors of commerce to the Malays – the school was never intended to prepare students for entrance to higher institutions of education. This is further facilitated with the Malay Administrative Service programme emerging in 1910 following pressure on a "colour bar" of non-European enrolment into the precedent Malayan Civil Service under the governorship of John Anderson in 1904, workforce intake numbers connected to such available education however were very limited well into the 1940s.

Decolonisation and independence

In the 1950s, there had been four initial proposals for developing the national education system: the Barnes Report (favoured by the Malays), Ordinance Report (modification of the Barnes Report), the Fenn-Wu Report (favoured by the Chinese and Indians), and the Razak Report (a compromise between the two reports). The Barnes proposal was implemented through the 1952 Education Ordinance amidst Chinese protests. In 1956, the Razak Report was adopted by the Malayan government as the education framework for independent Malaya. The Razak Report called for a national school system consisting of Malay, English, Chinese and Tamil-medium schools at the primary level, and Malay and English-medium schools at the secondary schools, with a uniform national curriculum regardless of the medium of instruction. Malay-medium schools would be known as "national", while other languages schools would be known as "national-type".

In the early years following the 1957 Malaysian Independence Act, existing Chinese, Tamil and mission schools accepted government funding and were allowed to retain their medium of instructions on the condition that they adopt the national curriculum. Chinese secondary schools were given the options of accepting government funding and change into English national-type schools or remain Chinese and private without government funding. Most of the schools accepted the change, although a few rejected the offer and came to be known as Chinese independent high schools. Shortly after the change, some of the national-type schools reestablished their Chinese independent high school branches. All remaining nationalised schools underwent a gradual implementation of Malay as the main medium of education in the 1970s, though English remained a compulsory subject in their syllabus.

In 1996, the Education Act of 1996 was passed to amend the Education Ordinance of 1956 and the Education Act of 1961. In 2004, the Ministry of Education was split into two: the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Higher Education. The latter handles matters regarding tertiary education. After a brief merging of the two departments in 2013, they again split in 2015. After the 2018 general election, the ministry became a higher education division under the MOE. In the Muhyiddin cabinet, the higher education division was separated again from the Ministry of Education to form as a new ministry since 10 March 2020. It is split as of 2023.

In late December 2021, the Kuala Lumpur High Court ruled that Chinese and Tamil vernacular schools were consistent with Articles 152 (1) (a) and (b) of the Malaysian Constitution, rejecting a lawsuit by three NGOs – Gabungan Pelajar Melayu Semenanjung (GPMS), the Islam Education Development Council (Mappim) and the Confederation of Malaysian Writers Association (Gapena) – seeking to ban vernacular schools on the grounds they were inconsistent with the Malaysian Constitution. The High Court's ruling was welcomed by Malaysian Chinese Association secretary-general Datuk Chong Sin Woon, Deputy Education Minister and Malaysian Indian Congress member Datuk P. Kamalanathan, and Democratic Action Party assemblyman Ronnie Liu. However, the NGOs now want the Federal Court to decide on vernacular schools’ constitutionality after the lower courts judgement.

Private missionary schools

During the British colonial period, missionaries of Christian denominations, such as the Roman Catholic religious orders – particularly the Lasallian Brothers and the Sisters of the Holy Infant Jesus – Seventh-day Adventists, Anglicans, and Methodists, established a series of "private missionary schools" which provided primary and secondary education in the English language. Almost all of these were single-sex schools. These schools were fee-paying and some had boarding schools attached to them. They were seen as "providing the best education" as they used "English as their medium of instruction". Although nowadays these missionary schools have fully assimilated into the Malay-medium national school system and most admit students regardless of gender and background, many of the schools remain single-sex and still bear their original names, such as the ones with the names of saints or words such as "Catholic", "Convent", "Advent" and "Methodist".

By the 1960s, the government no longer charged fees at primary schools with a Malay-language medium; fees for Malay-medium primary schools were abolished by the Education Act of 1961 and "abolished with affect" by 1966. The missionary schools providing a curriculum in the English-language medium continued to charge fees which were "regulated by the government". By the 1980s, missionary schools were offering a curriculum – primary and secondary – in the Malay-language medium and thus no longer required to charge fees. However, donations from these school's alumni and their families are still paid today.

During the 1970s, in accordance to the national language policy, the government began to change these English-medium primary and secondary national-type schools – missionary schools – into Malay-medium national schools. The language change was made gradually starting from the first year in primary school, then the second year in the following year and so on. The change was completed by the end of 1982.

At this period, the "mission school authorities baulked" at the government's request that they "surrender" their schools – land and buildings – to the government to be converted into fully aided national schools. Today, the various religious denominations still retain ownership of the "land and school buildings" of their missionary schools with the schools themselves operating as "only grant-in-aid national schools". They are not "fully aided" government schools. The church groups receive a "token monthly rent" from the government. The closure of a missionary school results in the "plots of land" being returned by the Education Ministry to their "owners" – the religious groups.

In 2017, a number of "mission school educationists" had reportedly re-established their schools as "private with a local curriculum" stating that the schools had "long histories as private mission schools". The report stated that "St John’s International School is now a private-funded education centre in collaboration with the La Salle Brothers Malaysia. It has links with the Lasallian organisation which has had a footing in Malaysia since 1904, with premier St. John's Institution as a mission school, and also in more than 70 countries". The Sisters of the Holy Infant Jesus are also considering such re-structuring for their schools saying that they have "no intention to sell their land and buildings for redevelopment".

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