150 Lorraine Pe Symaco
refugees who have been in Malaysia for almost three decades. The Rohingya
children are not given access to free public schooling and have to study in
learning centres run by UNHCR, NGOs and the communities themselves.
There is no recognized certification for learning in such centres and the
quality of education often is compromised due to lack of educational
resources, trained teachers, and crowded classrooms (CRICE 2013).
Children living in plantations in both the peninsula (smaller number
yet problem persists) and Sabah face similar issues of not being able
to join the mainstream schooling. These children, many of whom have
parents who are migrant workers from Indonesia, are without proper
citizenship documents and at risk of being “stateless”. In order to access
government schools, proper citizenship documents are required. This
leads to the exclusion of children of refugees and migrant workers as well
as undocumented children in the calculations of the NER. Also, for them
primary education does not promise a bright future since there are few
post-primary educational opportunities for them.
We have huge number of [undocumented] refugee children [in] Sabah.
I have given up, and nothing has been done. So these children are going
to become adults (...) [b]ut the refugee children are not going to go
anywhere. (Interviewee, Human Rights Commission of Malaysia)Other groups with similar fate, being undocumented, are street children
and children in detention centres and prisons. It is reported that in Chow
Kit, Kuala Lumpur alone there are more than 500 street children whose
parents are sex workers or drug abusers (Fazli, Yusuf and Ramli 2012).
Special Needs Students
Part of the population of out-of-schools children are those with physical
disabilities (e.g., having limitations in hearing, sight, or mobility). The
government estimates that about 1 per cent of the population have special
needs, though this is an underestimate as families rarely register their
children as having special needs (Government of Malaysia 2012). The
number of out-of-school children with physical disabilities likely declined
when the government equipped some schools with special facilities
(Government of Malaysia 2012). However, such schools with special
facilities tend to be located in cities and towns, and thus rural children with
physical disabilities are less likely to attend school. There is also a shortage