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Recommendation 1: There must be a greater focus on learning and addressing underlying challenges instead of symptomatic issues.
The general school culture must prioritise learning instead of examinations or rote memorisation. High-quality education that can motivate and nurture students is needed to produce Orang Asli students who are independent learners. Policies and programmes need to address underlying issues instead of only dealing with symptomatic problems at a surface level which do not resolve or eradicate these issues.
Recommendation 2: Indigenous cultures and history must be integrated into the mainstream curriculum.
It is very important that indigenous cultures and history be included in the mainstream curriculum, and that Orang Asli should not be represented as an exotic “other”, but celebrated as part of the diversity of peoples in Malaysia. Schoolchildren should be taught about different Orang Asli sub-ethnic groups, where they live, their contribution to nation-making, their arts, and their cultures that are closely linked to the natural environment.
The Orang Asli's rights to self-determination as indigenous peoples should also be included in mainstream education.
Recommendation 3: Existing programmes must be monitored and evaluated to ensure their efficient and effective delivery and implementation.
Regular monitoring, and mid- and post-programme evaluations are needed to ensure that programmes remain on track and are adjusted for new issues that may arise. This monitoring and evaluation needs to be considered at the beginning of the original programme design.
Recommendation 4: Teachers and school leaders who are equipped and capable of delivering quality education for Orang Asli students need to be entrusted with greater autonomy and balanced accountability.
Teachers and school leaders who are able to enhance the quality of education for Orang Asli students should be given the freedom to do so, as they could be role models that drive change. However, this autonomy needs to be balanced with accountability. These teachers and school leaders also need to be further trained and equipped to fully leverage this autonomy to deliver effective teaching and learning along with the efficient allocation of resources.
Recommendation 5: Pre-posting training on Orang Asli cultures could be provided to teachers, and infrastructure and resources for teachers in Orang Asli schools should be improved.
Teachers who are posted to schools with Orang Asli students should be provided with training to introduce them to the history and culture of the particular Orang Asli sub-ethnic group they will be teaching. This preparation module could also include implicit bias training to create self- awareness of learned racial biases against Orang Asli.
Teachers who are posted in Orang Asli schools often take up many different responsibilities outside the classroom, such as taking care of students after school and maintaining the school’s infrastructure. These teachers should be given more support and increased allowances for these added responsibilities. Their living conditions and teaching infrastructure could also be improved.
Recommendation 6: Teachers should be trained in innovative and adaptive pedagogies, and platforms for knowledge sharing could be established.
Teachers should be introduced to different teaching tools such as culturally responsive and adaptive pedagogies, both before and during their postings, with experienced teachers encouraged to share their best practices and offer advice to new teachers.
Other knowledge sharing initiatives could include annual teaching conferences, to foster networking and support among teachers; and user-friendly online knowledge sharing platforms as a resource for teachers.
Teachers often use their private funds to create innovative teaching tools. They should be supported, and a teaching and learning fund be made available to teachers. Recognition should also be given to teachers and schools for their best practices.
Recommendation 7: Trust and collaboration between schools and Orang Asli communities needs to be built as Orang Asli parents and their communities are important partners in education.
This is critical in creating a supportive environment for Orang Asli children. Schools and communities should have open communication and work collaboratively. Schools can also draw upon the community’s expertise and local knowledge as part of the learning experience for their students.
Recommendation 8: Community-based schools (PDK) need to be recognised as part of the support system for schools and adequate essential resources should be provided to PDKs.
Support and recognition should be given to PDKs for their important role in community education. PDKs provide preschool education, after-school programmes and in some cases alternative schooling for children without access to public schools or those who have dropped out. Some PDKs also provide learning opportunities for adults in the community.
Support can be in the form of funding and resource assistance to PDKs, including infrastructure such as libraries, computers and reliable internet connection. However, their autonomy should remain an important feature of their governance structure.
Recommendation 9: Good quality preschool education needs to be provided based on learning through play, social interaction, and their environment.
Orang Asli students without access to preschools are at a disadvantage when they enter Standard 1, as the curriculum assumes that students can already read, write, and count. Teachers have to pay special attention to teach them these basic skills, but this may not be possible given large class sizes. Students who attend preschool may also be more confident in their abilities and are able to transition to schooling life better. There are many villages without access to preschools and the founding of more community-based learning centres (PDK) could play an important role in providing preschool education for Orang Asli children.
Recommendation 10: Orang Asli communities should be empowered to be their own agents of change and participate in the process of Orang Asli-related policies.
This ensures that their cultures and views are incorporated in policymaking. Education issues and challenges should be addressed with Orang Asli parents and communities at the school, state, and national levels.
The creation of an Orang Asli education council comprising Orang Asli leaders, education policymakers, principals, teachers, and other relevant stakeholders to govern and monitor the progress of policy and programmes for children would help to ensure voices of the Orang Asli are fully taken into account and are involved in the close monitoring of any programmes.
Recommendation 11: Create a strength-based discourse to shift away from the current deficit discourse on Orang Asli.
Orang Asli students’ high dropout rate and gap in educational achievement are often attributed to their culture and way of life. All stakeholders need to move away from this 'deficit discourse', and instead adopt a strength-based framing that values Orang Asli culture as an asset. This includes shifting to culturally responsive teaching methods that draw on the students' cultural context to make learning relevant and effective.
Recommendation 12: The collaboration of relevant ministries must be strengthened to address the multidimensional challenges that Orang Asli children and communities face.
Multiple agencies need to coordinate in order to provide access to high-quality education. This includes building schools that are close to the villages, providing safe and reliable transportation and roads, and financial and resource assistance to families and schools.
Infrastructure such as hostels, libraries, computer centres, and internet connectivity are also desperately needed.
At the village level, basic amenities like electricity and clean water are vital.
The cooperation of NGOs and other charitable foundations are also needed in this effort. Information flow and transparency on the availability of assistance also need to be addressed so that parents and students are aware of and have access to the assistance and resources available to them.
When Donny first started school, he had a habit of burning his clothes.
No, he wasn’t playing with fire. And he wasn’t suffering from kitchen mishaps. It was just his first time ironing clothes.
“I was that sort of boy,” Donny says. “I would turn the heat all the way up.”
“I remember I burnt three or four shirts that way.”
Donny was only seven years old then, staying in a school hostel, his first time away from his family.
“When I first started, I had to be completely independent,” remembers Donny. “But luckily, there were hostel wardens there who helped teach us.”
“That’s how I learned to iron my clothes.”
Many Orang Asli communities are located outside the reach of tar roads, far away from government schools, making hostel schools the only realistic option for formal education.
Often, these schools are so far away, or the roads so poor, that students rarely have a chance to visit home during the school semester. In these long absences, there is a parenting gap that schools need to fill.
Donny’s hostel warden filled that parenting gap well. After all, his was a Pusat Intelek school, built for high-achieving Orang Asli students. Conversely, many Orang Asli who attend normal hostel schools report poor experiences.
In 2015, seven primary school Orang Asli students went missing from a hostel school in Pos Tohoi, Kelantan. School authorities initially assumed the students were playing truant, and tried looking for them in their homes. When that proved untrue, a police report was filed, and a search operation combed through the surrounding forests.
After a 46-day search that gripped the nation, only two were found alive, but starving to the point of death. The remains of four of their friends were found nearby. One is still missing, presumed dead.
The next day, the emaciated faces of the two survivors stared out at us from newspaper front pages and online reports. Their story soon emerged: They had escaped into the forest and hid there because they were afraid of the school’s teachers.
They told of how the teachers regularly hit students as punishment, and described other forms of punishment bordering on torture.
While corporal punishment is not uncommon in Malaysian schools, it is almost never practised in Orang Asli households, where children are usually disciplined politely.
To date, there has been no indication that disciplinary action was taken against the school or the teachers involved.
Needless to say, the affected families in Pos Tohoi refused to send their children back to school. The behaviour of teachers had led to a tragedy that ruptured the Orang Asli’s trust in the school.
While the Pos Tohoi incident is an extreme example of what could happen, research interviews conducted by IDEAS uncovered many more instances where teachers seemed to disengage from Orang Asli students when the teachers’ efforts didn't elicit the results they expected.
One Orang Asli student says she often feels like her teachers don’t like teaching Orang Asli: “They don’t say it, but from the way they look at us, it’s like they are forced to teach us.”
Another claims her teacher openly called Orang Asli students “bodoh” and not worth teaching.
“Teachers are the schools. Without teachers, schools are just buildings. If teachers fail to engage meaningfully with students, no amount of infrastructure or facilities will help,” says Wan Ya Shin, one of the authors of the research.
“Engaging meaningfully involves appreciating the different contexts from which students come from, and adapting teaching methods to meet them at their level. Teachers who are experienced enough and capable to do so should be given the freedom to innovate, for the benefit of their students.”
A number of teachers interviewed by IDEAS found success with Orang Asli students when they adapted the syllabus for their students, instead of following it to the letter.
“It was just common sense – why would I teach a Year Five syllabus when my students could not read?” says Samuel Isaiah, a former teacher at an Orang Asli school, whose innovative teaching methods included mobile classrooms called “Sekolah Pokok”, where he taught lessons under a tree right in their village.
“I didn’t change the curriculum, I adapted it to the needs of the children,” he continued. “When I first meet my students, I conduct a needs analysis, and work my way from there, so that they eventually align with the curriculum.”
Another teacher said that when the UPSR was cancelled due to the Covid-19 pandemic, it allowed her more freedom to teach at the students’ pace rather than rush to finish the syllabus in time for exams. She noticed better learning outcomes.
“It informed my everyday practice as an English teacher. I listened, I reflected, I evaluated, and then I revamped again. That process happened actively,” says Samuel, who spent a year engaging with his students and their communities, before devising contextualised interventions. He even visited his students and brought their families to the school to build rapport.
“They started realising that what they had to say was important to what was happening in the classroom, and I began to receive amazing feedback from them.” That feedback fed once again into Samuel’s process of continued innovation, leading to undeniable results – his students’ English pass rate grew from 30% (2008-2012) to 80% (2013-2017).
Donny, now 19 years old and studying in a vocational college, recognises the good fortune he had in attending his school, where most of the wardens and teachers were above reproach. But even he had bad experiences: “For me, the problem was that some teachers didn’t put in the effort to improve the education and curriculum for Orang Asli students,” he says.
“Orang Asli students will be more inclined towards physical activity (instead of classroom lessons), but if you teach them in the right way, everyone can learn.”
While teachers are rightly expected to do better, IDEAS’ research suggests they are not helped by a systemic lack of support.
“We need to make sure teachers assigned to rural schools are better prepared for their jobs, by giving them the right training and sensitisation, as well as adequate living conditions”, says Ya Shin, noting that many teachers she interviewed felt unprepared and unsupported to deal with the challenges of teaching Orang Asli students, especially in a rural setting. “But beyond that, we need a platform where these teachers can share their successes and failures, and learn from each other.”
Donny has a much simpler solution, that echoes Samuel’s urge for greater participation from the community: “If the schools are not building the Orang Asli community – well that’s why I’m working hard now,” he says. “That’s why I want to be a teacher for the Orang Asli community.”
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