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education. When asked to name the country, as many as seven countries were identified as
potential country role models though Findland and Singapore dominated the list as the most
popular choice.
3.2.8. Conclusion
In sum, there are some important gaps between perception and reality. Globally Malaysia
ranked very favorably in terms of spending on education. The student-teacher ratio is one of the
lowest in the world. Yet a large proportion of stakeholders identified lack of funding and
resources as barriers to quality education in the country. Hiring more teachers to reduce class
size has been identified by the majority of the stakeholders as one of the three priority area for
investment if extra funding became available for improving the quality of primary education.
Equally the Malaysian government has invested heavily ICT in the education sector with no
visible impact on learning outcomes. However, a large proportion of stakeholders identified
greater provision of ICT as important. In case of primary education where there is universal
coverage, more scholarship for children from poor families were perceived as important to
improve education quality even though extreme poverty has been nearly eradicated. This
suggests that stakeholders perceive hidden costs to be hampering performance of children in
primary education or access to quality education is still not equally available for children of all
income groups in Malaysia. Currently scholarships are given mostly to school children in hard-
core poverty. Bottom forty and middle income families still face significant private costs of
education such as uniform, transportation, stationery, exercise books, tutoring costs,. Tutoring
has become a common phenomenon in Malaysia especially among urban families. Private
tutoring is also considered as a means to perform better in examinations (Kenayathulla, 2012,
2013a, 2013b).
Malaysian Government has prioritized investment in education since the country’s
independence 60 years ago. The tenth shift of the Malaysia Education Blueprint 2013-2025 is to
maximize students’ outcome for every ringgit. This is because of the recognition that there is a
mismatch between student performance in national examinations and international
assessments. The government has recently used international assessments as benchmarks for
comparing the outcome of student learning from different educational systems (MOE, 2013;
Kenayathulla, 2014). Various initiatives have been undertaken to ensure that quality education
is provided for all the children regardless of gender, ethnicity and socio-economic status. Policy
changes include emphasis on 21st century teaching and learning, meeting basic infrastructure,
teachers training, leadership of principal and district administrators, community involvement
and public private partnerships.
However, the findings indicate major challenges in the delivery of quality education. Among
school specific factors, the main perceived barriers to quality education at the primary and
secondary level in Malaysia are the lack of effective school leadership and lack of motivated
teachers. This was followed by a lack of good or well-qualified teachers. There is significant
wealth gap in learning outcomes though there is also evidence of decline in performance in
international assessments across all wealth groups. Stakeholders also perceive hidden costs to
be hampering performance of children in primary education while access to quality education
is not equally available for children of all income groups in Malaysia. The findings also indicate
the under performance of boys from poorer families. These boys might have less interest in
studying since they might have to work to support family.