He said of the total, 311 were in the category of schools with disciplinary issues while 91 others were categorised as “hot spots” or having the potential to become problematic schools.

An action committee comprising the Royal Malaysia Police, the Malaysian Armed Forces, the Parents and Teachers’ Association (PTA) and NGOs has been set up to implement necessary activities and programmes to prevent the problems from getting worse.

“This classification is important to help the committee in conducting observations and intervention in the schools,” Chong told a press conference here today.

He said over the past five years, the annual rate of students involved in disciplinary problems stood at around 2%.

Among the problems recorded were criminal behaviour, bullying, obscenity, truancy and minor cases such as lackadaisical attitudes towards self-care and time management.

“We view disciplinary cases seriously and the state education department, together with the district education offices and schools are reminded to improve their focused interventions to address misconduct among students,” he said.

He said truancy was the main contributor to disciplinary issues at schools, and to address the problem, the ministry had set the key performance indicator (KPI) to reduce cases to 0.02% from the current KPI at 0.04%.

On the allegation that bullying had become rampant and more worrying, Chong said it was inaccurate as only 0.06% of such cases were recorded over the past five years.

“Bullying in schools has three main categories, namely bullying that involves language (abusive language), physical bullying (pushing/shoving) and gestures (eyes, body language), but a new category is currently being studied, that is, cyber bullying.

“This involves comments made against the victims on Facebook or other social media platforms that will have adverse effects on those particular individuals,” he said.