Schools with low enrolment of students to be merged into one

KUALA LUMPUR: The Education Ministry has found two ways to overcome low pupil enrolment in rural area schools by combining such schools into one.

Education Minister Datuk Seri Mahdzir Khalid said the ministry had performed its pilot study by combining three schools that were under-enrolled, or Sekolah Kurang Murid (SKM) in Kuala Lumpur.

He said SK Jalan Pasar, SK Jalan Pasar 2 along with SK (L) Jalan Pasar for boys had been integrated into one school where the number of pupils registered were less than 150 for each school.

Speaking in the Dewan Rakyat today, Mahdzir said pupils in Year 2 and 3, and Year 4 and 5 would be combined in a class. Year 1 and 6, he said, will be grouped differently.

“Based on the pilot study, it is possible to form combined schools for Sibuti area which has 27 under-enrolment schools,” he said in responding to Ahmad Lai Bujang (BN-Sibuti).

Ahmad had asked the ministry on whether it had initiated a study on the need of consolidation of under-enrolled schools in Sarawak.

In a research by the ministry in 2016, there were 2,996 SKMs nationwide.

From the total, 2,058 were Sekolah Kebangsaan (SK), 578 national-type Chinese schools (SJKC) and 360 national-type Tamil schools (SKJT).

There were 132 under-enrolled schools with less than 20 students and 44 schools with under 10 pupils.