Inequality in Education, Its Consequences, and the Ways to Overcome Them in Malaysia

Vision 2020, which was articulated by Dr. Mahathir Mohamad for Malaysia to become a fully developed nation economically, politically, socially, spiritually, psychologically, and culturally in terms of national unity, social cohesion, social justice, political stability, quality of life, social and spiritual value, and national pride and confidence. And it was further articulated that by 2020,’ Malaysia should be a united nation that is infused by strong moral and ethical values, living in a society that is democratic, liberal and tolerant, caring, economically just and equitable, progressive and prosperous, and in full possession of an economy that is competitive, dynamic, robust, and resilient’ (Mahathir 1991). This can only be achieved through having good education schemes, aiming to develop a holistic person that is intellectually, spiritually, emotionally, and physically balanced and harmonious. However, education inequality exists in Malaysia. Based on a study from Rao, R. et al, on the relationship between school inequality and economic growth, found that it is intercorrelated.

The average GDP per capita of our country would consequently decrease when school inequality increases. GDP per capita reflects the earning of a family. Meaning if the average income of a family decreases, the average GDP per capita will drop too, making the poor families become even poorer. If this phenomenon left untreated, the vicious cycle will repeat continuously, forming the poverty cycle eventually. Behind the growing income gap, education is one of the key factors. In other words, income inequality is a symptom of education inequality, which exists in Malaysia.The definition of educational inequality derived from Wikipedia is the unequal distribution of academic resources, for instance, school funding, qualified and experienced teachers, books, and technologies to socially excluded communities. In light of that concern, there are few causes contributing to this issue, including geographical conditions. For example, some schools in rural areas can only be accessed using limited road or even river transport system. They tend to be isolated and disadvantaged. They may not even aware of scholarships and grants available to them, leading to major differences in educational success, and eventually, economic inequality exists. There are a few factors contributing to the gap performance between students in rural and urban areas. Urban students are exposed to more information and knowledge through having better quality in education, mass media accessibility, with educated families and peers. On the contrary, rural students have limited exposure to the outside world, unlike their urban counterparts. Nevertheless, this reality is not well aware of among those who have been given the privilege of accessing a good education. Undoubtedly, there is the gap exists in quality and accessibility of education between rural and urban area, owing to variations in factors such as family economic, school locations, school and teacher distributions, allocation of school funds, diversity in the implementations of specific reforms, parent-teacher association involvement in-school activity, etc.

First of all, family economic, in other words, the socio-economic class is one of the key drivers that leads to education inequality. Students from poor income families often have poorer academic performance compared to those from low and medium-income families. Due to financial instability, poorer families face great challenges in sending their children to extra classes and lessons. Some students from poor families might have to work straight away after finishing their secondary school to lessen their parents’ burden or entirely support the families. The deficit in higher education qualification causes them not able to secure a more fulfilling job in the future. Some may even follow their families’ footsteps since they do not have role models to look up to especially if everyone in the community comes from similar low-income family background. The academic performance of learners is well determined by the family background. According to a survey, since the parents’ expectation towards education is low, rural students feel no pressure to attain good performance. Indeed, parental encouragement has a positive influence and acts as a push factor towards their child's performance. But, most of the parents do not care about their child's performance in rural areas.

In contrast, students from medium and high-income families are privileged enough to pursue a higher level of education, having said that their parents have better economic status as well as their awakened general awareness of the importance of education itself. Apart from that, school location contributes to the existence of education inequality too. According to STAR paper, news cited from ‘Greater priority for rural schools’ dated 28th July 2018, the Education, Science, and Technological Research Minister, Dato Sri Michael Manyin said many rural schools in Sarawak lacked proper infrastructure and basic amenities such as electricity and treated water supplies as well as road accessibility. For example, about 70% of all schools were physically dilapidated, 375 had no electricity supply, and 428 schools in Sarawak still without treated water supply, the sources mainly from rainwater harvest, gravity feed, tube water, and water from rivers, which is unreliable. Furthermore, Manyin said 721 schools do not have proper road access, which eventually will affect students as well as teachers’ attendance in schools due to the lacking of all-weather road access since some are accessible only by rivers or sea. Aside from the inconvenience, students are exposed to higher risks and dangers when commuting to school using rivers. So, rural schools are at disadvantage, which will impact students’ overall performance, be it in academic or even other skills or competencies. Another significant variation contributing to the gap between rural and urban areas is teacher distributions. Teacher undeniably plays a significant and vital role in influencing student learning outcomes, attitudes, and academic achievement. And there are different achievements between students taught by high-quality teachers compared to low-quality ones.

Rural schools face a challenge like a shortage of teachers, mainly caused by the turnover trend as many teachers have decided to move to urban schools which can offer them a much better work condition. This problem arises due to the remoteness of rural schools, lack of support from the education department for teachers’ further enhancement through development programs, work overload, and poor pay system. To make the matter worse, the majority of teachers in rural areas are the new teachers who do not master the teaching technique yet, making the learning progress disturbed and not running properly. Rural schools lack quality school administrators, school principals, too, causing discrimination in getting fundamental resources. Therefore, in order to close the gap, a rural school should employ high-quality teachers and school principals, who does not limit to adequate academic qualifications, but also well-equip with the skills that can cater to students’ learning needs and different learning styles. In order to retain high-quality and talented teachers, adequate pay or salary is one of the attractions. Furthermore, many teachers in rural schools are expected to do multi-grade teaching due to the small size of these schools, hence, they are not able to impart each grade’s curriculum separately. Poor school infrastructure and conditions are one of the factors too. Information communication and technology (ICT) has been regarded as an important element for the economic growth and social development of a country. However, in rural schools, inadequate coverage of internet and ICT infrastructures, causing education inequality too.

Challenges faced by rural schools are limited infrastructures, incapability to buy ICT equipment, lack of knowledge on ICT use, lack of skills, and training. Nowadays, a lot of teaching and learning resources are available online. In other words, the development of ICT has changed the teaching and learning process from traditional methods to a technology-based approach, which is far more effective and convenient. Nevertheless, with all the challenges exist, students from rural schools are not privileged enough to utilize it. This probably made them unaware of there are scholarships and grants available for them as well. Many of them lost hope to pursue higher education due to financial problems. They will soon feel lacking equality when start working as education inequality is directly linked to income inequality nowadays. In order to enhance students’ readiness for higher education opportunities by triggering them to learn to think critically, some instructional supplies such as well-equipped libraries, media centers and laboratories are essential. All these are important to make the teaching and learning process to be more effective. However, students from rural counterparts are at disadvantage and have limited access to all of these too. So, in order to close the gap between rural and urban schools, the share of resources among all school systems should be equalized. Therefore, in order to provide a decent learning environment for the students from rural schools, rural school revitalization need to be taken into serious consideration by the federal government and embarked soon, followed by close monitoring as well as ensuring major progress. First of all, a safe and conducive learning environment is extremely important.

Students will feel more grateful and the education given is more valued by them under these positive circumstances. In contrast, under-funded school facilities with leaking roofs, poor lighting, and ventilation system, will eventually demotivate the students from attending classes. Imagine some rural schools students can only sit on the mats on the floor to do reading and writing due to an inadequate supply of table and chair, which is not an appropriate posture for the long-term. For those critically dilapidated ones, which lack basic amenities like electricity and treated water supplies as well as road accessibility need to be on top priority. This is to secure both students' and teachers' safety while commuting to school. In addition, a good rural school must come with a good, effective school leader and quality teachers. In view of the high turnover trend among them, opting for better pay and working environment in urban counterparts, something must be done simultaneously to retain the talents. As nobody will feel motivated to work with low pay. There are some other causes that have triggered an exodus of rural teachers too, like social, cultural, professional isolation, overwork, paying structures, being put on contract without assurance of permanency, inadequate housing allowance, and economically deficient surrounding communities. These made recruiting rural school teachers a great challenge. A good pay system, well-packaged with necessary allowances must come into the picture to support their socioeconomic growth so that they can deliver their professionalism in long run.

Improvement in students’ learning outcomes can be seen by putting a focus on teachers as a central force. The same goes for the school leader, principal must be valued too as they are the ones to provide high-level supports for their school communities, who are students and teachers. Rural students can excel in academics too, just that they may need more encouragement and opportunities under a tougher environment. For example, certain challenges faced by rural school teachers and students when DLP, dual language program, which is a voluntary policy for schools to fully use English in the teaching of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) subjects were introduced in Jan 2016. Exposure to language is the key to improving. Unlike urban students who can benefit from various exposure and interactions, encouraging them to speak English, rural students not given the opportunities neither. That is how challenging for rural students. Even though they can speak English, they do not have many opportunities to use it outside their classrooms.

So, teachers play an important role to encourage rural students to master English via correct language learning strategies such as extensive reading in order to have better opportunities for career advancement in the future. Of course, teachers have to be adequately qualified to teach the subjects that are allocated for them. In 2019, in Sabah, LBS Foundation in collaboration with the Rotary Club of Kota Kinabalu Pearl worked for hand in hand to launch Project REAL (Rural-Focus, English for All) for rural students to increase their accessibility in resources to improve their English, bridging the language gap between rural and urban schools. They set up an English corner at each school with all of the provisions needed to ease the study and a wide range of academic tools, reading materials like English-Malay dictionaries are provided, together with engaging programs for the student experiences. Education inequality between rural and urban schools, leading to the concept of segregation among rural students. And this made rural students feel neglected, causing them to tend to mingle with friends from outside school rather than participating in school activities. Some may start indulging in drugs, cigarettes, and alcohol at such a young age. Eventually, this will result in the country losing out in terms of having a diverse pool of talent. Therefore, we can conclude that education inequality leaves a huge negative impact on our country.

So, aside from emphasizing on academic achievements, not to forget imparting moral values is of utmost importance to grooming future talent. However, most rural children are left behind by their parents who need to earn a living and stay far away from them. With such a growing environment which is a lack of love and attention, the left-behind children often lack confidence and have delayed in both psychological as well as physiological development. Hence, it is extremely important to impart good morals and values within them. Seeing how crucial the matter is, equipping students with moral education is inevitable. Apart from incorporating the moral education curriculum, rural students should be given the chance to experience through experiential activities and game-based learning.

As such, this will foster optimistic attitudes and good values among rural students. Parents play a vital role to drive the success of their children too. They can spend quality time with their children, supporting them spiritually. Students from rural areas also must have the awareness that education is an effective instrument that can raise self-belief, self-esteem, and self-efficacy. So, they should not view their living environment as one of the barriers to their success. In contrast, they should strive for their very best and be motivated to attain good achievements for a better future. Children’s education is one of the key factors driving the development of the economy. However, the unequal distribution resources and its consequent effects on rural-urban student performance has remained a grave issue in Malaysia. This leads to rural-urban disparities in academic performance.

As such, it needs to be a rising focus that students come from both urban and rural areas should be treated equally, be it in the education schemes or opportunities to excel in the future. Highlighting the critical challenges faced by rural schools currently, for instance, dilapidated building lacking basic amenities, quality teachers and principals, limited accessibility to ICT, confidence-lacking among rural students due to the poor learning environment, low socioeconomic status, etc. need to be put as a top priority and addressed urgently. This may need consensus and efforts from various parties, for instance, government, teachers, parents as well as students themselves. Knowing that revitalizing rural schools is not an easy job, especially with the limitation of funds and budget, but yet it has to be done by putting the right policy in place to close the gap between urban and rural schools. With that, students from rural schools can have the opportunity to access quality education, and competitive enough to secure for better career advancement in the near future.