Stateless children who have successfully enrolled in government schools last year are now required to produce their passport for admission.
This is because Immigration Department had issued a letter last year on December 28 and imposed this new condition.
First of all, MOE has its own guidelines for school admission.
According to Peratura-Peraturan Pendidikan (Penerimaan Masuk Murid Ke Sekolah, Penyimpanan Daftar dan Syarat Bagi Pengekalan Murid Belajar di Sekolah) 1988 which came into force since July 23, 1998, a non-citizen can enroll in government schools if they are:
“5(1) Kategori murid yang berikut yang bukan warganegara boleh diterima masuk ke sekolah:
(a) anak kakitangan kedutaan asing;
(b) anak yang ibu bapanya adalah juga bukan warganegara, yang bekerja dalam perkhidmatan atau agensi kerajaan, badan berkanun atau mana-mana tempat lain dengan permit kerja yang sah;
(c) kanak-kanak yang ibu bapanya adalah pemastautin tetap Malaysia, atau
(d) kanak-kanak yang dipilih oleh Kerajaan kanak-kanak itu untuk melanjutkan pelajarannya di Malaysia menurut mana-mana Memorandum Persefahaman atau Perjanjian antara Kerajaan Malaysia dan Kerajaan negara kanak-kanak itu.”
Possession of passport is never a pre-condition for school admission. And surely, if children of Malaysian Permanent Residents can enroll in government schools, there are no reasons why children of Malaysia citizens should be discriminated.
So the question now is, why is MOE allowing Immigration Department to dictate the terms and conditions for school admission of stateless children? Shouldn’t the power to decide the terms and conditions for school admission in government schools be vested in MOE?
The right to education has been recognized as a human right in a number of international conventions, including the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights which recognises a right to free, compulsory primary education for all, an obligation to develop secondary education accessible to all, in particular by the progressive introduction of free secondary education, as well as an obligation to develop equitable access to higher education. As of 2016, 164 states were parties to the Covenant. Sadly, Malaysia is not one of them.
There are close to 300,000 stateless children in Malaysia. Many of them are the children of Malaysian citizens. Therefore MOE should never allow possession of passport as one of the prerequisite for school admission, or many stateless children will be denied such basic right.