Sarawak’s ranking in public examinations result worrying

KUCHING: Sarawak’s position at 13th ranking based on the average overall student passes in public examinations is a cause for concern for the state government, said Education, Science and Technological Research Minister Datuk Seri Michael Manyin Jawong.

He said the ranking needed to be improved to at least 10th position so that Sarawak would not continue to be left behind in education compared to other states in Peninsular Malaysia.

“What is more worrying is the very low average passes in Science and Mathematics subjects, at only 23 per cent compared to the national target of 60 percent,” he told a media conference after holding a dialogue with members of the Sarawak Legislative Assembly on the proposed merger of schools with low enrollment here yesterday.

He said efforts to improve the passing rate of students in Sarawak, especially in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) subjects were vital to enable students from the state to compete with others at the university level.

Among the factors identified that contributed to the decline are poor education facilities, lack of teaching and learning resources, lack of qualified teachers for specialised subjects and a less competitive learning environment.

As such, he said his meeting with the Barisan Nasional assemblymen today was to discuss on how to overcome the problem among the students.

The Ministry of Education and Department of Education were also urged to provide better and adequate education infrastructure besides teaching staff who were specialists in certain subjects such as Science and Mathematics.

Manyin said currently there are 1,454 schools in Sarawak, comprising 190 secondary schools and the rest primary schools, with 1,020 schools being classified as in deplorable state and another 415 in a critically deplorable state.

At present 651 schools in Sarawak had student enrollment of 150 or less while 1,004 schools had less than 30 students.

“We want the assemblymen and parents to support efforts to emerge these schools with low enrollment and we also want them to understand our purpose of doing so is for the benefit of the students and to improve their performance in school,” he said, adding that his ministry was collaborating with the Education Department to implement the programme. - Bernama