Targeted Impact Group

Our nation was once called to wake up by the story of a brilliant young lady by the name of Veveonah who documented her journey of sitting for an online examination in a rural area (Pitas, Sabah). She had to brave through the forest, camp overnight all by herself, and climb up a tree to get Internet coverage. What we do not see are the many more thousands of students who have to bear similar difficulties in silence. No child should risk their safety while trying to get an education.

The worst part is, that is not the whole story. These students might one day question themselves, how far exactly they could go from there, when the extent of their future is determined by the strength of their Internet connection, among other modern educational infrastructures they may be deprived of as the world keeps up with the fourth industrial revolution.

The idea of 'competing' with students who already are well-supported in terms of infrastructures and confidence to make it into higher levels of education and stay there is too much to bear for students whose families have to choose between spending money on rice or mobile data. As time goes by, they might even consider dropping out as teenagers to start picking up low-paying jobs to immediately help with the finances of their families, despite not necessarily breaking the poverty cycle as they cannot gain the values from obtaining a quality education.

At the same time, education these days does not come without challenges for students from the middle- and upper- class backgrounds. We are aware of the other equally crucial determinants of success in education such as teachers’ quality, mental health, nutrition, proper guidance, etc. Therefore, what we need more pressingly now than ever before is student empowerment, which our ministry believes must begin in these two aspects: better facilities and effective mentoring. These two aspects are key to providing impactful access and direction in education for students in the long-run.

The policies may be made in the board rooms, but the true champions of making the policies as effective as they can be in the implementation are the very people who are supposedly the closest with the students: the parents. The culture of leaving it to schools alone to manage our children's education needs to change. To address the aforementioned factors affecting our students’ performance, parents are in an important position to account for the unique circumstances each child is in and cooperate with other entities in the ecosystem to improve them.

At the ministry, we may be the policymakers but we are also at least brothers and sisters to our little family members at home, and we too want the best for them. We want guaranteed quality in their education. We want systems and environments that can guarantee progress and success in their growth as human beings, citizens, and workforce in the future. We want them to know and feel that we acknowledge their struggles and commit to make a change for them.

With the uncertainty ahead of us, it is all the more reason that we need parents at home to be involved in being attuned to the reality for every child when it comes to their education. Parents’ role during this period and even post-COVID will remain fundamental. For example, overcoming the issue of literacy entails making more reading materials available at home to promote reading skills, engaging children in helping with their homework, and getting trained as parents on the importance of quality education and how to offer continuous support to their children.

Our ministry is ready to coordinate the resources to make this happen, but the conversations and actions to better the quality of education must go beyond the school gates into the houses of these students. It takes all of us to make change happen, but the potential of parental roles is the spark of it.