Education ministry to review rules on school admissions

The education ministry is looking at amending the rules on school admissions to ensure that children, including non-citizens and those undocumented, have access to education.

Minister Fadhlina Sidek said the amendment to the Education Regulations (Admission of Pupils to School, Register Keeping and Conditions for Retaining Pupils at School) 1998 would apply to admission to government and government-aided schools.

"The amendment will ensure that children in this country have access to education, guided by the existing laws, without compromising the country's sovereignty and constitution.

"It includes non-citizen children, those with undetermined citizenship status and children without identification documents who were previously not included under the regulation," she said when winding up the debate on the annual Human Rights Commission of Malaysia report for her ministry in the Dewan Rakyat yesterday.

Fadhlina said the ministry was also in the midst of looking for ways to enable refugee children to enrol at schools through the amendment.
 
Meanwhile, Fadhlina said the education ministry would not tolerate and had always been proactive in dealing with the spread of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender ideology in schools.

She said  various cross-ministerial programmes related to education on sexual and reproductive health awareness had been implemented.