School offers to be Asean integration pilot school

KANGAR: Sekolah Kebangsaan (SK) Sena is prepared to be a pilot school to foster regional integration among the 10 Asean countries.

Its headmaster, Roslan Yatim said culture, arts and sports could serve as a bridge to strengthen ties among Asean countries.

“If we want to realise an Asean Community, we cannot just look at economic and political cooperation but beyond that, like culture, arts and sports.

“The regional population should eventually have a good understanding of Asean’s significance.

“What better way to promote it than in schools, from the primary level onwards,” he told Bernama here.

In this regard, SK Sena has taken the initiative to set up an Asean Corner at the school’s hallway, where the national costumes of each Asean member country are displayed.

Roslan said the flags of Asean countries were also hung along the school corridor, and signboards with snippets about Asean placed at the school compound to basically educate the pupils.

“The efforts are carried out voluntarily by the teachers here; they even forked out their own money to set up the Asean Corner,” he said.

He said Asean was also specially taught in the school while the pupils were tested on their knowledge of the topic in a quiz held during the weekend.

SK Sena is a cluster school of excellence and was selected to represent the country at the Asean Carnival from July 2 to 4 at Anubansongkhla School, Songkhla, Thailand.

Malaysia is the current chairman of Asean; the 27th Asean Summit will be held at the federal capital from Nov 18 to 22. - Bernama