Record: Ng Kim-Soon, Abd Rahman Bin Ahmad, Muhammad Ibrahim Bin Sulaiman, and Ng Mei Xin Sirisa, “Homeschool in Malaysia: A Foresight Study” in International Education Studies 8, no. 10 (2015): 163-174. [Article]
Summary: Ng Kim-Soon, Abd Rahman Bin Ahmad, and Muhammad Ibrahim Bin Sulaiman are from the Faculty of Technology Management and Business, Universiti Tun Hussein Onn Malaysia, while Ng Mei Xin Sirisa is from the Faculty of Arts and Social Science, Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman. In this article they describe the results of a survey that they used to investigate the condition of homeschooling in Malaysia.
Homeschooling in Malaysia is not widespread, but it is growing. Numbers are hard to come by, but the authors estimate that there are approximately 5,000 homeschooled children in Malaysia. Before 2003, parents could homeschool their children without restriction, but with the Compulsory Education Act of 2003, parents must now gain permission from the Ministry of Education in order to do so. Based on the limited Malaysian homeschooling research that exists (particularly Rajamony, 2008), many parents homeschool for reasons that are similar to homeschooling in other countries: social problems in mainstream schools, inefficiency of teaching and learning, and practices in the mainstream school that are unaligned with the family’s beliefs.
In order to understand homeschooling in Malaysia, it is necessary to have an understanding of Malaysia’s educational system. The educational system in Malaysia formally includes nine types of schools such as national schools, religious schools, vocational and technical schools, full boarding schools, and a few more. Everything is overseen by the national Ministry of Education, though each state has an Education Department to coordinate local affairs. Primary education begins at age seven and lasts for six years. Students are promoted to the next grade regardless of academic performance. Since Malaysia is a multicultural society, the language of instruction is a contentious issue. For example, from 2009-2012, Science and Mathematics had to be taught in English.
30 homeschooling parents returned their questionnaire. From these 30 parents, 4 were also interviewed. The authors do not give any insight into the response rate of their survey or how they found their participants. However, they summarize the social class that their participants come from when they say, “This specific group of parents have high influence of society. They include bloggers and also parents who had studied abroad and are able to compare the different ways and style of education offered. In Malaysia, majority of the home schoolers exist in Kuala Lumpur [the capital]. Thus, in this study, the respondents are from Kuala Lumpur” (pg. 164). 50% of the participants were aged 36-45 years old with nearly 25% of the participants being aged 25-35 and 46-55 years old respectively. As for ethnicity, 63.3% were Chinese, 26.7% were Malay, and 10% were Indian. (For comparison purposes, Malaysia overall is approximately 50% Malay, 23% Chinese, and 7% Indian). Like most homeschooling studies, the vast majority of respondents were female. Their sample is very well educated, and almost 60% have either a Masters degree or a PhD.
According to their survey, the main reasons for homeschooling were having no faith in Malaysia’s educational system (60%), religious belief (30%), and flexibility with travel time (10%). When asked to rate the importance of several homeschooling components on a 1-5 scale, the most important component was the involvement of the parents in their children’s education. Furthermore, religious instruction and pedagogical flexibility were of relative importance, while child-centered learning and interaction with peers/adults were of neutral importance to the parents. Finally, the parents ranked gadgets/computers and a teacher-centered approach to education as rather unimportant components.
Having determined that having no faith in Malaysia’s educational system is the primary reason for homeschooling, the authors turn to the specific reasons for this lack of faith. They find the following difficulties, in order from the most to least cited: 1. a fear that the schools moved too quickly for their children, 2. a dislike for the changes taking place in Malaysia’s educational system, 3. a desire to delay formal and structured instruction until their child is ready, 4. too much homework, 5. the curriculum causing poor academic achievement for their child, 6. negative peer socialization, 7. curriculum and instruction that is incompatible with the family’s beliefs or values, 8. the lack of religious instruction, and 9. the fact that most public schools use teacher-centered instruction.
Through their analysis, the two main issues the authors identify in the growth of homeschooling are the curriculum and social issues like parental involvement. By looking at these two issues, they generate three scenarios to describe the possible growth of homeschooling in Malaysia. If the curriculum improves and social issues decrease, parents will find homeschooling less necessary, so enrollments will fall. If social issues increase and the curriculum worsens, then homeschooling enrollments will increase. Finally, if both improve or both worsen, then they will cancel each other out, and homeschooling trends will remain stagnant.
In all, homeschooling is the rise globally, and it appears that Malaysian parents are following that trend. Like other countries, homeschooling has first been adopted here by highly educated and wealthy parents who have both the knowledge and financial security to educate their children at home. The future of homeschooling in Malaysia, and other countries, hinges on whether schools can meet the needs and preferences of parents.
Appraisal: The study suffers from its small, non-representative sample. Many homeschooling studies have these same problems, but the issue here is that the authors do not even explain how they found their sample, so it is difficult to say in which ways it may be biased. Nevertheless, it makes sense in a country where homeschooling is still so uncommon that it would first flourish among the upper-class. Therefore, assuming that their sample captures some general characteristics of Malaysian homeschooling among the urban elite, it appears that while religion is relevant, parents are more concerned about the poor educational quality that is on offer in Malaysian schools.
Disclaimer: The views expressed in reviews are not the official views of ICHER or of its members. For more information about ICHER’s Reviews, please see the «About these Reviews» Section.