Govt still gives priority to B40 students to enter fully-residential schools – Mahdzir

EDUCATION Minister Datuk Seri Mahdzir Khalid yesterday stressed that the government is still giving priority to students the B40 households to enter fully- residential schools.

He also refuted the allegation by Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad that the government had deviated from the original objective of establishing fullyresidential schools and was no longer giving emphasis on providing assistance to poor students.

“The government still gives priority to students from B40 households, both in urban and rural areas, with qualifications to enter fullyresidential schools,” he said when winding- up the debate on the motion of thanks for the royal address for his ministry at the Dewan Rakyat sitting yesterday.

On the problem of student misconduct, Mahdzir said the ministry had taken various measures including through the implementation of School-Based Assessment which did not assess only the student’s academic performance, but also other aspects, including behaviour and personality.

“Schools and PTAs ( parentsteacher associations) are also working with the police to monitor problems of misconduct among students,” he said.

Mahdzir said in 2017, the number of criminal misconduct cases among schoolchildren was recorded at 0.14 per cent; bullying ( 0.06 per cent); obscenity ( 0.05 per cent); vandalism ( 0.04 per cent); truancy ( 1.4 per cent); indiscipline ( 0.29 per cent); time wastage ( 0.28 per cent) and mischief ( 0.12 per cent).

“The percentage of cases like bullying, although only 0.06 per cent, but the actual number is huge because we have almost five million schoolchildren in the country,” he said. — Bernama