SPECIAL-NEEDS children. Children who go to school without breakfast. Children from poor families. Stateless children. Orang Asli children.

These were the children who mostly occupied Dr Maszlee Malik’s attention during his 20-month stint as education minister before it came to an abrupt end at the start of the new school year.

In fact, almost half of the achievements that Maszlee is most proud of and which he listed in his ministry’s 2019 report card, are policies meant for these children.

This approach fit into what Mazlee told The Malaysian Insight in perhaps his first media interview after he was appointed in the portfolio in September 2018.

Maszlee told this reporter that he wanted to instil the values of love and mutual respect in an education system that he felt was too obsessed with grades and rankings.

The former International Islamic University political scientist took over the portfolio after the Najib Razak administration’s focus on child geniuses and moving up global university rankings.

In one of his first announcements, Maszlee urged university administrators not to be obsessed over the rankings game but focus on producing graduates of integrity and who are socially responsible.

“Maszlee had performed a lot of good deeds and reforms like taking care of special-needs children and upgrading rural schools,” said political analyst Azlan Zainal.

“However, all of these did not seem as priorities for his party as the implementation of those policies were not done collectively,” said Azlan of the think-tank Ilham Centre.

Another political scientist Dr Wong Chin Huat said Maszlee’s free breakfast programme, which is slated to start this year, would have addressed malnutrition and stunting among children from poor families.

A United Nations study in 2017 found that almost one in five or 20% of children in the country under the age of five are stunted because their families could not afford enough nutritious food.

However, such a policy somehow failed to resonate among middle-class parents, said Wong of Sunway University.

Helping the vulnerable   

In 2019, the ministry opened 526 new classes for special-needs children as part of his zero-rejection policy rule in schools.

There are now 88,419 special-needs pupils, known by their Bahasa Melayu acronym as (MBK), up from 83,498 last year, the ministry report said.

Last year, 75 schools started new classes for MBK pupils, bringing the total number of such classes to 10,200.

In 2019, his ministry also enrolled 2,636 children without proper identity documents in school.

Some of his other noteworthy successes include the enrolment of 51,191 pupils from poor and low-income families into public universities.

The other achievements in helping underprivileged families are:

* 52.8% of the intake in government-aided residential schools went to bottom 40% of household incomes (B40).

* 62.06% of matriculation spots in public universities went to B40 children.

* RM68.1 million in scholarships for these students.

* 4,369 pupils missing from school tracked down and re-enrolled.

* 90% or 452 of 534 dilapidated schools repaired and reoccupied, while 1,216 science laboratories
were refurbished.

* 14,911 special offers for places in public universities for MBK, Orang Asli children, B40 kids and athletes.

Maszlee also formed two special committees to look into Orang Asli education and the needs of MBK pupils and students in schools and tertiary institutions.

At the time of his resignation, he was also working on changing the law to make school education compulsory all the way to the secondary level.

Besides the underprivileged, he also focused on reforming public universities, promoting academic freedom and autonomy and inculcating intellectualism. – January 3, 2020.