THE government has decided to backtrack on the previous enrolment policy of students to the Mara Science Junior College (MRSM) boarding school system, and will restore its earlier policy, which allows students from all types of schools to apply to MRSM.

This is said to be in line with the “Malaysian Family” concept introduced by Prime Minister Ismail Sabri Yaakob in his maiden speech.

Rural Development Minister Mahdzir Khalid said all students will be given the chance to continue their studies at MRSM and the proposed policy changes on the matter announced earlier were not applicable.

MRSM’s official website had stated that its 2022 admissions for form one and form four students were open to national school students only.

The previous entry requirements for MRSM only required students to be Malaysian citizens and to be from a local school.

“The MRSM is a long-standing education industry, so I want to emphasise today that the Rural Development Ministry, after discussing with Mara (Majlis Amanah Rakyat) officials and leadership, has agreed to return to the original policy.

“It means that students of (government-aided) religious schools, SJKC (Chinese National Type Schools), and SJKT (Tamil National Type Schools) can also apply (for admission to MRSM),” he said at a media conference today.

Several opposition leaders had previously voiced their opposition to the new conditions for MRSM admissions, which had limited entry to only national school students.

Mahdzir said the eligibility and selection of students will be based on the MRSM Entry Tendency Test, which will evaluate their interest in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) subjects, as well as the students’ personalities.

He added that the 10% intake quota of non-Bumiputera students will remain.

“The MRSM can only accommodate a total of 7,500 form one students and 2,000 form four students for each annual intake session although 77,834 have applied for a place in form one and 24,495 for form four for the 2022 term,” he said.
 
He said Mara also aims to provide a 60% quota for outstanding students from B40 families to study at MRSM.

“The MRSM education system aims to pave the way for secondary education opportunities so as to produce Bumiputera students who are holistic, excellent in academics, science, technology and entrepreneurship.

“MRSM’s education system is also slightly different from other education systems in terms of cognitive ability and personality of students. MRSM gathers excellent students with high potential in line with the implementation of its character development programme based on MRSM core values of SIKAP (Scientific, Independent, Creative, Trustworthy and Patriotic),” he added.

There are 55 MRSMs nationwide that can accommodate 37,198 students. – Bernama, September 5, 2021.