MINISTRY IDENTIFIES 402 SCHOOLS WITH SERIOUS DISCIPLINARY ISSUES
311 schools have disciplinary cases, while 91 are in hotspot category
ATOTAL of 402 schools nationwide have been identified as having disciplinary issues, including students’ involvement in crime, bullying, vulgarity and truancy.
Deputy Education Minister Datuk Chong Sin Woon said the breakdown saw 311 schools faced disciplinary cases and 91 in the hotspot category.
“Last year, 111,895 students had disciplinary problems.
“Of the total, 95,046 were secondary schools students while 16,849 were from primary schools.”
He said the ministry’s statistics showed that 2.03 per cent of students were involved in disciplinary issues from 2012 to last year, with truancy topping the list.
“There are reasons why students skip school. These include having no interest in their studies, family problems and poverty.
“So, we cannot view truancy as an absolute disciplinary issue because, sometimes, it involves social and income problems,” he said after chairing the ministry’s committee meeting to address disciplinary issues among school students here yesterday.
Chong said schools needed to find out why students skipped school.
He, however, declined to reveal the details of the schools which had students skipping classes.
He said the ministry had set a key performance indicator (KPI) to reduce truancy to 0.02 per cent from the current KPI of 0.4 per cent.
Chong denied that bullying cases in schools were on the rise as only 0.06 per cent of such cases were recorded in the past five years.
In 2013, 4,120 bullying cases were recorded, 2,906 cases in 2014, 3,011 in 2015, 3,448 last year and 872 cases were reported up to this month.
“Such perception took place because of the various videos of bullying incidents in schools that had gone viral on social media.
“From our investigations, these are old videos that are making the rounds again.
“Our checks show that some of the videos were from neighbouring countries.”
Though the number of bullying cases was not serious, Chong said the ministry viewed the matter seriously.
He said verbal bullying was the most common in schools, followed by physical, body language and cyberbullying.
On the reports that teenager T. Nhaveen had been a victim of bullying since his school days, Chong said the ministry did not receive any report relating to that from SMK Datuk Haji Mohd Nor Ahmad in Bukit Gelugor, where he had studied.
Chong said the matter should be left to the police to conduct the investigation since the case had been reclassified as murder.
For bullying cases which occured outside the school compound, Chong said victims could lodge a police report, which in turn would refer the matter to the school for further action.
He said the ministry had reminded state education departments, district education offices and schools to take measures to address disciplinary problems among students.
These include increasing focused intervention, such as holding a meeting with police; local councils and district education offices; forming a task force to solve such issues; engaging with the community and parents in student self-development; and, through counselling programmes in schools.
...we cannot view truancy as an absolute disciplinary issue because, sometimes, it involves social and income problems. DATUK CHONG SIN WOON Deputy education minister