KUALA LUMPUR (April 25): The World Bank said on Thursday that Malaysia's education system still has areas for improvement, particularly in addressing learning challenges faced by children from disadvantaged backgrounds.

According to its 29th Malaysia Economic Monitor report for April 2024 entitled 'Bending Bamboo Shoots: Strengthening Foundational Skills' students, especially those in early childhood education, often lack school readiness skills.

This deficiency leads to challenges in reading, writing and mathematics throughout their schooling.

“While most children entering primary school attend early childhood centers and perform well on school readiness indicators, approximately 24% still lack school-readiness skills,” the report said, adding that most of these children come from lower-income families.

The World Bank noted that initiative has been made by the government through the Ministry of Education such as the Reading Aid Programme and the Primary School Literacy and Numeracy Program.

Nevertheless, the World Bank said despite considerable efforts to address these challenges, the “educational gaps” still exist.

If the issue of “educational gaps” is not addressed properly and successfully, Malaysia’s aspiration to be in the top-third of the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) may be challenging, the World Bank stated.

PISA refers to the worldwide study by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development that measures 15-year-old students’ reading, mathematics and science literacy. In 2023, Malaysia’s PISA score was 404, compared with 431 in 2018 and 440 in 2015.

Malaysia managed to move up to the middle-third in PISA 2018, but it fell back to the bottom-third in PISA 2022, according to the World Bank.

In addressing the challenges, the World Bank suggested that Malaysia should give all children a head start by providing accessible, equitable, and quality preschool education, by implementing at least one year of free and compulsory pre-primary education for Malaysian children to realize universal preschool enrolment.

The World Bank also recommended the government to have effective training programs for teachers such as mentoring, structured lesson plans, targeted instruction, educational and technology, to improve the quality of their teaching performance.

This is often because many teachers lack training which can directly affect the development of student learning. Moreover, there's a concern regarding teacher discipline, as nearly 40% of children in Malaysia report that their teachers are occasionally or frequently absent in schools.

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