In his first policy address on education, Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi acknowledged the failure of the national school system to foster racial integration, and has outlined several proposals to redress this.

Speaking at the opening of the Malaysian Education Summit 2004 in Petaling Jaya today, he said there is "great concern" over the current level of racial integration and understanding, with race-based cliques having become the norm in schools and universities.

"Surely, this kind of racial exclusiveness will sow the seeds of misunderstanding and mistrust later in life. If this trend continues, we may well drift apart, only to have few superficial commonalities between us, and few genuine ties that bind us together in a common destiny," he said.

Abdullah said several measures would be implemented to improve racial integration in national schools.

These include increasing the number of non-Malay principals, making teachers more aware and responsive to multi-racial needs and sensitivities, and increasing opportunities for pupils to interact.

One such activity would be the pilot 'e-integration programme' project, scheduled to be implemented later this year, involving 60 schools in Penang.

It is intended to encourage students from national schools and national-type schools to interact by playing computer games.

"We must motive our youth to take part in these integration efforts by making them exciting, enjoyable and appealing to them," said the prime minister.

Quality schools

In 2001, the government implemented the 'Vision School' project to tackle the issue of polarisation among young Malaysians. However, Abdullah did not mention this as part of his plan to promote racial integration.

He also highlighted the need to improve the quality of national schools and to make these the 'schools of choice' for parents. At the same time, the position of national-type schools would also be safeguarded.

"We need to address the concerns of parents about the quality of sekolah kebangsaan (national schools) and work to rectify the weaknesses so that parents will gladly choose to send their children to a high quality, multi-racial national school," he said.

National schools, apart from providing foundation skills and knowledge, are also supposed to play an important role in cultivating inter-racial tolerance and understanding.

Currently, however, national schools are becoming more "mono-racial" with non-Malay enrolment shrinking over time.

More than 93 percent of Malay Malaysian students go to national schools, while 90 per cent of Chinese Malaysian students are in Chinese-language schools and 70 per cent of Indian Malaysian students are in Tamil-language schools.

Abdullah said efforts would be made to enhance the teaching profession which is "no longer as highly regarded as it was before" and revive the holding of interesting curricular activities.

'Workforce-ready'

Another measure will be a move to introduce Mandarin, Tamil and Arabic as subjects, to overcome the perception of parents that certain language subjects are not taught well or given enough emphasis.

The prime minister said a second strategy to enhance the quality of education will be to build world-class tertiary institutions to produce world-class graduates.

To achieve this, the government will have to consistently measure and benchmark the quality of tertiary institutions, especially public universities, and strengthen the links between academia and industry to ensure that graduates are 'workforce-ready'.

Abdullah has said that shortcomings in educational quality and national unity were urgent issues and this had prompted the education portfolio to be divided into two ministries - Education and Higher Education - during his cabinet reshuffle last month.

The two-day conference is jointly organised by the two ministries and the Asian Strategy and Leadership Institute. About 250 participants are involved.