IT was recently reported in Malay daily Utusan Malaysia that the SJKC Kong Aik in Arau, Perlis has an overwhelming Malay pupil population.
In fact, there wasn’t a single Chinese pupil who enrolled in Year One for the 2025/2026 academic year which began Monday (Feb 17). Of the 23 pupils, 13 were Malays, nine Siamese and one Indian.
In total, the school located in Mata Ayer has 190 pupils consisting of 93 Malays, Siamese (69), Chinese (19), Indians (five) and the rest are of other races.
The school has been described as “unique” by the Perlis state education director Rose Aza Che Arifin because it recorded more pupils from other races than Chinese.
He attributed this to the locality of the school’s surroundings which boast a Malay-Siamese majority. All in all, Perlis has 74 schools, 10 of which are SJKCs or National-Type Chinese Schools.
There are a plethora of different responses when the news was shared on the Facebook page pf Utusan Malaysia.
Some took a positive view on this news story, claiming it as proof that the education system was making forward strides under the Madani administration. One commenter pointed to the learning environment in a SJKC that is deemed to be superior to that of a national school.
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One netizen tried to be too clever by stating that “the school is based on race instead of language otherwise it would have to distinguish between being a Mandarin, Cantonese or Hokkien school” instead of being identified as a “Chinese school”.
Thankfully, a fellow commenter corrected him by highlighting that “Cantonese and Hokkien and are dialects, not language per se”.
Another noted that PAS (which coincidentally governs Perlis) would not welcome this news given that the school could be a potential breeding ground for future DAP members.
Such notion was countered by other commenters on grounds that there exist many other SJKCs in three other PAS-ruled states (Kedah, Kelantan and Terengganu). Nevertheless, it was clearly pointed out that PAS is anti- vernacular education.
A seemingly proponent of a single-stream education wondered if similar multi-stream education system scenario exists abroad with schools teaching a different syllabus using different language.
One netizen pointed out that all races lived in harmony in Kelantan and Terengganu, fluently speaking the dialects and enjoying East Coast delicacies such as budu (fermented fish sauce). This should be the real example of Malaysian solidarity.
The comments highlight that vernacular education remains a highly contentious issue regardless of the make-up of its student population.
This will remain a hotly contested issue for the foreseeable future with no clear solution in sight. For the time being, the example of SJKC Kong Aik makes it clear that many farsighted Malay parents are quite happy to send their children to a Chinese school.
Locality may be a factor but one suspects that there are various other motivating factors as well. As one netizen summed up, there is absolutely no harm attending a vernacular school to learn multiple languages. – Feb 20, 2025
