However, it welcomes the enrolment of stateless children in national schools. It defines a stateless child as one who has a Malaysian parent but does not possess citizenship documentation.

The association’s chairman, Mohamad Ali Hassan, proposed that the government send teachers to teach children in refugee camps.

“They come from different cultures,” he said. “It’s better if the government hires trained teachers to teach at the refugee settlements.”

He noted that the United Nations had a read-write-and-count syllabus and suggested that teachers use it for refugee children. He said education was one way of preventing the recruitment of refugee children by criminal gangs.

However, he acknowledged that the cost of sending teachers to refugee camps would keep the cost low. “The government has to find a practical way to educate every kid without incurring high costs,” he said.

According to the home ministry, there are almost 300,000 stateless children in Malaysia, whose parents are mostly from Indonesia, Myanmar and the Philippines. Deputy Prime Minister Ahmad Zahid Hamidi said this in a reply to PKR lawmaker N Surendran in the Dewan Rakyat in October last year.  Some of the parents are said to be here as refugees.

Recently, Kedah Menteri Besar Ahmad Bashah Md Hanipah announced that his government would allow all stateless children to enrol in public schools in the state.

However, he said, the parents or legal guardians must work towards securing documentation for the children from the National Registration Department to allow them to sit for national examinations.

Ahmad Bashah’s statement followed reports about the plight of seven-year-old Tan Yao Chun, who was not allowed to enrol in a school in Changlun because he did not have a birth certificate. He was born to a Malaysian father and a Myanmar mother in Thailand.

The education ministry subsequently said such children were allowed to enrol in national schools.