An independent committee set up to investigate allegations of racial segregation in national schools has found that the practice was minimal and not done deliberately.

Education minister Musa Mohamad who revealed this today, said the seven-member committee reached the conclusion after investigating 210 schools named by the National Union of Teaching Profession (NUTP) in a memorandum last year.

The independent committee found that segregation is actually a perception of the situation in schools but this does not mean that there was intentional racial segregation, said the minister during a press conference at his office in Kuala Lumpur.

Musa said the committee identified a small number of schools where there were classes made up entirely of students from one racial group but said there was no deliberate attempt by the schools to split the students according to their ethnicity.

This has to do with the timetable of the students. The schools cannot fit the timetables so as to avoid the perception of segregation, explained K J Ratnam, a member of the committee who was present at the press conference.

According to Ratnam, another reason for the perceived segregation was the low enrolment of non-Malay Malaysian students in national schools.

In all national primary schools, there are only 2.1 percent Chinese students and 4.7 percent Indian students, he said based on the findings from the eight-week study.

He explained that in schools with relatively larger proportion of Malay Malaysian students, it was unavoidable for several classes to comprise students from only one racial group.

There are structural problems especially in national primary schools where there are too few non-Malay students. Some schools only have five to six non-Malays, he added.

Special programmes

Ratnam said in the majority of cases investigated, segregation was perceived to occur because the students were enrolled in special programmes approved by the ministry of education.

The special programme classes, started in the 1970s, was aimed at sending students from rural areas into premier schools in the science stream to achieve goals stated under the New Economic Policy, said Ratnam.

He said segregation in national secondary schools also occurs because students at Form 4 were required to select specific subject packages.

More Malay students may go for vocational studies. This is due to choice and not an aim to segregate them, he added.

Ratnam said in the remainder of the cases, students were only segregated temporarily while they attended classes in religion, moral education or mother-tongue education respectively. As such, these cases did not raise concern.

To deal with cases where segregation occurs, the committee, in its 20-page report, recommended that more attention should be given to resolve the timetable inconsistencies.

In cases where monoethnic cases are unavoidable, the committee suggested that the top class should be open to students from all races.

The committee also proposed that more effort be made to attract and boost enrolment of non-Malay Malaysian pupils in national schools.

New initiatives

Meanwhile, Musa said the education department would be working on new initiatives to make national schools more attractive to non-Malay Malaysian students.

We are introducing mother-tongue classes (within the timetable), information technology classes as well as the smart schools concept, he said.

He added that as it takes time for the programmes to take effect, the government introduced the vision school concept to bring together students from different racial groups.

When asked, Musa said he was satisfied with the report produced by the independent committee.

We cannot assume that when it happens, students are completely segregated. We must take into consideration the total (aspect of their schooling) and not only by tackling one part, said Musa adding that the students also play and eat together although they do not study together.

Asked if any action would be taken against the NUTP for raising the allegations, Musa said he only regretted that the NUTP made the accusations without making prior investigations.

The issue of racial segregation in schools first surfaced late last year when parents of several students from a school in Selangor complained their children who qualified among the top five in their classes were relegated to the second class.

Following this, NUTP secretary-general N Siva Subramaniam submitted a list of 210 schools which allegedly practiced racial streaming. This prompted the ministry to set up the committee to look into the matter.

On another matter, Musa said the USJ15 Vision School has postponed its opening from April 1 to June 5.

Some residents are unhappy over the governments decision to build a large complex in a short span of 10 months for the Vision School while the shortage of Chinese schools was not addressed in the area.

The government had cited insufficient funds for the delay in construction of another Chinese school.