THE Parent Action Group for Education (PAGE) welcomed the RM64.1 billion allocation to the Education Ministry but wondered how much of it would go towards making significant changes to the education system.

PAGE told The Malaysian Insight it would be concerned if the bulk of the allocation went to teachers’ emoluments.

“PAGE is encouraged by the generous budget for education. We, however, caution the public that a large portion of it goes towards teachers’ emoluments, which leaves little for many substantial items,” the group said.

At RM64.1 billion, the Education Ministry’s allocation takes up the largest chunk of the RM297 billion national budget for next year. 

More than RM730 million of the allocation is for the maintenance and upgrading of school buildings; RM783 million is for repairs to dilapidated schools, particularly in Sabah and Sarawak; RM23 million is make national schools disabled-friendly; and RM12 million to pay utility bills, including sewerage fees, for 2,000 government-aided schools.

These add up to RM1.55 billion. It is unclear how the balance of a little under RM63 billon will be spent.

PAGE also questioned why religious and tahfiz schools received a hefty amount for maintenance and upgrading, when there were so few of them compared with other types of school.

National schools received RM300 million for this and Chinese national-type schools and Tamil national-type schools, RM50 million each.

Government-aided religious schools and registered tahfiz schools also received RM50 million each and people’s religious schools, private religious schools, and registered religious pondok schools, RM25 million each.

Mara Junior Science Colleges, missionary schools, national-type secondary schools and independent Chinese secondary schools are also in line to receive funding for maintenance and upgrade.

PAGE said the four categories of religious schools would receive RM200 million in total.

This meant that these schools were getting more per school than the national primary and secondary schools, it said.

“We question the need for such a high allocation for the various types of religious schools.”

The National Union of the Teaching Profession, meanwhile, is glad that RM783 million has been set aside for repairing dilapidated schools as many of these faced maintenance issues, such as leaky roofs and broken toilets.

“We hope that this allocation can minimise these problems,” said its president, Aminuddin Awang.

He said, however, the sum is mainly for schools in Sabah and Sarawak and hopes that this does not mean that schools on the peninsula would be overlooked.

The United Association of Private Chinese Secondary School Committees (Dong Zong) commended the government for allocating RM15 million – RM3 million more than this year –  to the independent Chinese secondary schools for maintenance and upgrading work.

Its chairman, Tan Tai Kim, took this as a positive sign of the government’s view of Chinese education.

“The additional RM3 million will be distributed evenly among the 62 Chinese independent schools across the nation. This means that each school will get approximately RM241,000, compared with RM193,000 last year.” – October 12, 2019.