Chinese schools are increasingly being targeted

KUALA LUMPUR: The Education Minister claims that throughout the past ten years, the number of Bumiputera students enrolled in Chinese schools has increased by more than 50%.

According to Fadhlina Sidek, enrollment increased from 11.67% in 2014 to 18.52% in 2024.

She claimed that in the same time frame, the percentage of non-Bumiputra kids enrolling in the same schools had decreased from 88.33% to 81.48%.

For public schools around the country, the pattern is the same. The percentage of Bumiputra students enrolled rose from 93.81% to 95.12% between 2014 and 2024, while the percentage of non-Bumiputra students registered decreased from 6.19% to 4.88%.

Little changed in Tamil schools. While non-bumiputra student enrollment remained at over 99% for the entire ten-year period, the enrollment of Bumiputra students only increased from 0.38% in 2014 to 0.49% in 2024, the respondent stated in a written response.

In response to a written question from Chow Yu Hui (PH-Raub), the minister provided data regarding the total number of pupils registered in national, Chinese, Tamil, and international schools nationwide.

She stated that as of May, 88,951 students were enrolled in overseas schools in this country. Of the total, 29,225 (32.9%) were non-Malaysians and 59,726 (67.1%) were Malaysians.

“From 2019 to 2024, the number of Malaysian students attending international schools increased by 34%. The proportion of non-bumiputera kids attending foreign schools has increased by 30.6%, but the number of Bumiputera pupils enrolled in these institutions has climbed by 49.4%”, she wrote.

Separately, Fadhlina stated that there are less than 150 pupils enrolled in 3,062 public schools throughout Malaysia. Throughout Malaysia, there are 2,053 national schools, 383 Tamil schools, and 626 Chinese schools that are categorised as low enrolment schools, or SKM (Sekolah Kurang Murid).

Fadhlina explained that in order to remedy this, schools with less than thirty kids have combined classrooms that include every student from Year Two through Year Six.