From Wan Chang Da and Hema Letchamanan

Aina (not her real name) is 14 and in Form 2, but she struggles to read Year 4 text. Classroom lessons are a blur because she cannot follow the teacher’s words, and the textbooks make little sense to her.

For Aina, school is a place where she must be, only because her single mother works long hours.

Kumar (not his real name), 16, is in Form 4, but his reading is halting and slow. He understands very little Bahasa Melayu and almost no English, so the classroom lessons pass him by.

For Kumar, school is a place to be with friends and to have a proper meal.

Are Aina and Kumar outliers? Here are two children who attended school for a decade but continue to struggle with foundational literacy. Their struggles represent a larger silent crisis in our classrooms, with students present in body but absent in learning.

In the case of Aina, she struggled even with the literacy of her native language.

Do they have special learning needs?

What support was rendered to them to catch up, especially for Kumar, who has less than a year before he sits for the Sijil Pelajaran Malaysia examination and finishes secondary school?

More importantly, as a society, have we failed Aina and Kumar by making them stay on in school for so long?

Would it be better if they could be taken out of the school system to prepare them for life through other avenues than the formal and compulsory school system?

There are so many questions that we must not stop asking about the likes of Aina and Kumar to ensure those who come after them do not suffer and pay for the same mistake we made in keeping them in school.

We need to look into the classrooms, not only to make sure the Ainas and Kumars are physically present in class, but also that they are learning.

Back in December 2020, the nation was shocked when three schoolchildren in Sabah sued their English language teacher, who went AWOL for almost an entire year.

The High Court subsequently ruled in favour of the schoolchildren, on grounds that the teacher had neglected his statutory duty by failing to attend classes. Importantly, the judge also chided the principal, the director-general of education, the education minister and the government for negligence and oversight in supervision.

Was this an isolated incident of a teacher AWOL for a year, or was this case made public because of legal action taken by pupils? If it is the latter, how many more unreported absenteeism cases are there across the ten thousand schools?

Yet, since the High Court delivered the verdict in 2023, what are the improvements and additional measures that have been put in place to, at least, make sure teachers are in the classrooms?

We need to look into the classrooms, not only to see whether the teacher is present, but also whether pupils are actually learning. A teacher can “teach” every day, but if pupils like Aina and Kumar still grapple with foundational literacy after nearly a decade in school, then something is fundamentally broken.

The Malaysia Education Blueprint 2013-2025 was launched with the aim, among others, to produce students who will perform in the top three of international student assessments.

Yet, after a decade, Malaysia suffered a significant decline in the 2022 Programme for International Student Assessment, which in fact was lower than the average in mathematics, reading and science.

Furthermore, in the 2023 SPM examination, 23.2% and 25.9% of pupils failed mathematics and additional mathematics respectively; more scandalously, a third failed at least one subject in the examination.

We need to look into not only the top scorers who made it to the front page of the newspapers, but also how the general population of schoolchildren across the country is performing academically.

As the education blueprint is approaching the end and we wait for the launch of the next edition of the blueprint, it has been announced that the most recent education policy reform is to extend the duration of compulsory education.

The Education Act was amended in July 2025 to extend compulsory education from six years of primary school to include five years of secondary school.

A day after the amendment, the government, when announcing the 13th Malaysia Plan also put forth the proposal to make preschool mandatory for children at the age of five, and lower the starting age for Primary 1 to the age of six.

In brief, when the proposal is fully implemented, all children between the ages of five and sixteen must be in school, which otherwise would constitute a criminal offence.

While it is a laudable effort to make schooling compulsory for 12 years, it would be a great disservice to our children and youth if schools fail to serve the primary purpose of educating, inspiring them to learn, and preparing them for life.

We would have schooled them for 12 years, without educating them.

Now that all children will be required by law to be in school, we must ensure that children learn and teachers teach. If we fail to do so, this reform to extend compulsory schooling is no different to doubling the incarceration time for our children and youth in an institution called a ‘school’.

Most crucially, in order for this reform not to be a mere extension of time in school, we should never stop looking into the classrooms and be satisfied that the teachers and students are physically present.

If foundational literacy is a concern, what personalised support can we give to each individual child? Can the different classrooms and schools across the country uniquely provide differentiated approaches to meet the demands of students in ensuring no child is left behind?

Please do not stop looking into the classrooms.

Wan Chang Da and Hema Letchamanan are with the School of Education at Taylor’s University.

The views expressed are those of the writers and do not necessarily reflect those of FMT.