Education Ministry to review rules on children's school admission

KUALA LUMPUR - The Education Ministry (MoE) is looking into amending the rules on school admission to ensure children, including non-citizens and those undocumented, have access to education.

Its Minister, Fadhlina Sidek said the amendment to the Education Regulations (Admission of Pupils to School, Register Keeping and Conditions for Retaining Pupils at School) 1998 will apply to admission to government and government-aided schools.

"This amendment will ensure that children in this country have access to education, guided by the existing laws, without compromising the country's sovereignty and constitution.

"... it includes non-citizen children, with undetermined citizenship status and children without identification documents who were previously not included under the regulation," she said in winding up the the debate on the Human Rights Commission (Suhakam) annual report for her ministry in the Dewan Rakyat today.

Fadhlina said the MoE was in the midst of looking into ways to enable refugee children to enroll in schools through the amendment.

Meanwhile, Fadhlina said the MoE will not tolerate and has always been proactive in dealing with the spread of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) ideology in schools.

She said various cross-ministerial programmes related to education on sexual and reproductive health awareness have been implemented.

Elaborating, she said the ministry had always emphasised on the concept of 'karamah insaniah' and 'anak yang baik lagi cerdik' to instill moral values, good manners and integrity in students through all education segments. - BERNAMA