South East Asian Studies, Vol. 15, No.1, June 1977

Education, Developlllent and Change in Malaysia*
Martin RUDNER**

The creation of a modern, national, integrated institution of education in Malaysia was a
post-colonial undertaking. The conception of education in British Malaya had been narrowly
confining, both socially and scholastically.

Indeed, through to the end of the colonial period,

education was segregated into separate and disjointed linguistic-ethnic streams: English,
Malay, Chinese and Tamil, with impoverishment of resources their common lot. l ) Following
the Second World War there had occurred a dramatic rise in enrolments, to be sure; however
ongoing organizational discontinuities and constraints resulted in a downward trend in enrolment ratios during the last years of colonial rule. 2 )The advent of representative government

in 1955, and independence in 1957, marked a point of departure for the modernisation of
educational institutions and policies.

Over the period of independence, education has beensystematically assimilated, by stages, with government's emerging goals of national development.
The study of the performance of education systems presents certain methodological difficulties.

It is often convenient to portray educational trends by devising input-output tabu-

lations for particular denominators, or variables, e.g. enrolments, expenditures, etc. However,a degree of caution must be exercised in their interpretation, lest logical fallacies intrude
through the application of 'closed' systems analysis to essentially 'open' institutions like education.

Education cannot be logically isolated from the context of society, from external

normative and social influences. 3)

The following discussion will, therefore, treat the develop-

ment of the Malaysian education institution as a system, in relationship with the multiplexityof attitudinal, historical and cultural factors affecting the country's economic, political andsocial life.
* The author expresses his appreciation to the Harry S. Truman Research Institute at the Hebrew Universityof Jerusalem for its support for research in Malaysia and Singapore; and to the Institute of Southeast
Studies, Singapore, for a visiting fellowship and the privilege of using its facilities.
** Department of Economics, Research School of Pacific Studies, The Australian National University.
1) On colonial education policy and practice in British Malaya, see Charles Hirschman, 'Educational
Patterns in Colonial Malaya', ComparatizJe Education Review (1972); Philip Loh Fook Sen, Seeds of
Separatism: Educational Policy in Alalaya 1874-1940 (Oxford, 1976); Rex Stevenson, Cultivators andAdministrators: British Educational Policy Towards the ~falays, 1875-1906 (Oxford, 1976).
2) Malaya's overall enrolment rate was given as 63 per cent in 1951 (Member for Education, Federation of
Malaya Legislative Council Proceedings, 19 Sept 1951), declining to about 58 per cent of the eligible agegroup by 1959: International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, Economic Development of
Malaya (Singapore, 1954), pp. 142-77. See Part 3, below.
3) Viz. Gunnar Myrdall, Asian Drama (London, 1968), pp. 1533-6 and appendix 3, section 2.

23

I The Evolution of a National Education Institution
Among the priority issues tackled by the inter-communal Alliance Party government
following its victory by an overwhelming majority in the country's first general election (1955),
was the reform of education policy.

Shortly after assuming office, the government appointed

a special parliamentary committee under the then Minister of Education, Dato (later Tun)
Abdul Razak, to consider the reconstitution of Malaya's fragmented colonial educational
system along more integrated, national lines.

The Razak Committee's charge aimed at:" ... establishing a national system of education acceptable to the people of the Federation as a whole which will satisfy their needs and promote their cultural, social,economic and political development as a nation, having regard to the intention of
making Malay the national language of the country whilst preserving and sustaining
the growth of the language and culture of other communities ... "4)
The criterion of acceptability enabled the Razak Committee to combine diverse ethnic
and modernising values into a formula for education institution-building.
lation of 1957 set the process in motion.

The ensuing legis-

The new policy crystallised in an education institu-

tion linguistically plural in form, integrally national in content, Malay in its symbolism anddevelopmental in its purpose.

Given the enthusiasm of independence, it appeared as if the

Alliance formula had indeed succeeded in sublimating the primordial racial controversies of
the recent colonial past. 5)
But not for long.

The Alliance leadership presumed, with a simplistic utilitarian faiththat was to become characteristic of their political style, that the benefits of dynamic growthwould serve to overcome latent dissensions in society.

Hence, the very rapid expansion ofprimary school enrolments seemed to demonstrate widespread acceptance of the linguistic andcultural elements of the 1957 reforms among the main ethnic blocs, Malay, Chinese and Indian(Tamil).

However, the extent of the consensus achieved did not preclude further dispute over

the attendant social, economic, and political functions of the new education policy, as it unfolded.

During the 1960s, education was to become, in effect, a policy surrogate for issues ofhigh strategy concerning the direction of national development.

For Malaysia, the emergent

education system acquired a special significance as an instrument for, and expression of, politically determined goals.
The initial thrust of the 1957 policy reforms focussed on the primary level of education,and particularly on the historically sensitive matters of language and curriculum.

In reshap-ing the heterogeneity of the past, primary schooling was reconstituted into an educationallyintegrated whole having linguistically separate parts: so-called 'Standard schools' in which
4) Report of the Education Committee (Kuala Lumpur, 1956), p. 1.
5) On Malaysian education since independence, see, e.g. Francis Wong and Ee Viang Hong, Education in.Malaysia (Hong Kong, 1971); R. O. Tilman, 'Education and Political Development in Malaysia', Yale
University Southeast Asian Studies, Reprint Series No. 27; and Higher Education and Development
in Southeast Asia (LA.U.;U.N.E.S.C.O., Paris, 1969).

24

M. RUDNER: Education, Development and Change in Malaysia

the main language of instruction was Malay, and 'Standard-type' schools in which it was
English, Chinese (Kuo-Yii) or Tamil.

All Standard-type schools provided compulsory in-struction in Malay, the constitutionally-ordained National Language; similarly, English was acompulsory subject in all schools. 6 )Thus the Razak policy distinguished between linguistic

usage and language status, admitting pluralism in the media of primary instruction while
conferring educational primacy onto English as the international language, and Malay as the
National Language. Moreover, all Standard and Standard-type schools were to use acommon curriculum and syllabus. Indeed, the notion of common educational content was thepivot around which the Razak policy turned.

The uniformity of educational content com-prised the institutional cement that bound linguistic pluralism to national norms of educational
enculturation.
Standardisation of the primary school curriculum was significant not just for enculturation, but also with respect to patterns of socialisation in education.

Historically, each of thelanguage streams had its own instructional orientation and, through this, its particular social
bias.

The English medium followed the grammar school type; Chinese schooling was direct-

ed at recreating the literati of the classical tradition of China; Malay education was perceived
early on in terms of a fossilised, agrarian, peasantry; while the Tamil school was geared to its
constituency of an immigrant plantation and urban lumpenproletariat.

Just as the English

and Chinese schooling reflected their respective literary traditions in educational socialisation,
the Malay and Tamil curricula connoted education for social stabilisation, at best, or economic
impoverishment, at worst.

Following the Second World War some initial but not very defi-nite steps were taken to modernise the vernacular schools' curricula.
to fruition by the 1957 policy reform.

This process was carried

In line with the new policy, the grammar school out-

look of English-medium education was now extended to all Standard and Standard-type
schools.

Public education conceived as plural in form and national in content, became also

literary-academic in orientation.
Secondary education received a somewhat more ambivalent treatment under the 1957
policy.

The Razak Committee, for its part, had called for the institution of a new, assimilated'National-type' secondary school network having English as its medium of instruction.

The

purpose was to bring about the desired linguistic-cultural synthesis at higher rungs of independent Malaya's education system.

Serving all communities, this assimilated secondary

level would blend Anglophone manner with communal accommodation, after the style of thecontemporary Alliance ruling elite.

In order to encourage existing Chinese and English

secondary schools to conform to the new model, the government for the first time offered full
financial support for National-type secondary education.

At the same time, privately-6) Furthermore, provision was made for the teaching of Chinese and/or Tamil (Malay already being compulsory) in English-medium Standard-type schools at the request of 15 or more pupils in any grade.

25

maintained schools were permitted to continue operating and even qualified for partial grantsin-aid.

By pursuing a dual policy of supporting both continuity and change in secondary

schooling, conflict was avoided or postponed, though at the price of failure to give momentum
to the new directions in post-primary institution-building.
Paradoxically, the successful implementation of the Razak Committee recommendations
at the primary school level shifted the focal point of public controversy onto the more ambiguous secondary education policy.

As numbers of pupils passing through the Standard andChinese and Tamil-medium Standard-type schools increased during the late 1950s, theEnglish language basis of National-type secondary education posed an increasingly frustratingbar to their advancement. 7)

Although the issue appeared still to be linguistic, language infact represented an education policy mechanism regulating pupil progression and, ultimately,access to social status and roles.

Bitterness over education language obstacles to social mo-bility was sharply manifest in the relative success of the more cummunal-oriented Malay andnon-Malay opposition parties in the 1959 general elections.

The returned, but shaken,

Alliance government felt impelled to take stock of its education policies, for which a review
committee was set up under the new Minister of Education, Abdul Rahman Talib.
Whereas the initial Razak Committee formulations comprised, in essence, a formula forinter-communal accommodation, the policy review undertook an exercise in social and cultural
engineering.

Responding to perceived challenges from their communal flanks, the Allianceleadership came to treat post-primary education instrumentally as an antidote to the incubation of counter-elites.

The Rahman Talib Committee accordingly confirmed the post-1957

pattern of primary schooling, and set about harnessing secondary-level education to the imperative of elite formation in the Alliance image.

However, since the Alliance had not yet

formulated any coherent social doctrine of its own, the policy review fell back on ethno-linguistic differentiation, as between Malays and non-Malays, as the basis of post-primary educational reform.
The reversion to a dualistic approach to secondary education underscored the divergent
enculturation and socialisation goals pertaining to Malays and non-Malays.

Malays were to

be satisfied of the status of the National Language in education, and assured of their vernacular avenue to upward mobility.

Their post-primary education could continue in Malay.

As

regards non-Malays, it was deemed necessary to extend English-language National-type education as a means of inculcating Chinese and Indians with attitudes and values considered
suitable.

For, English education was regarded as making non-Malays acceptable for co-

option to the elite, in the oligarchic tradition of Anglo-Malay colonial condominium, perpetuated, in a cultural sense, in the Anglophone Chinese-Malay independence partnership.
The separate acculaturalization and socialization patterns introduced into secondary education
7) With effect from 1958, special Malay language classes were attached to otherwise English-medium
National-type secondaries, but this was clearly a limited venture.

26

M. RUDNER: Education, Development and Change in Malaysia

bore the seeds of future conflict among the second-generation elites of the different communities.

Later in the 1960s, government reacted by shifting back to a unitary post-primarymodel, though the future basis of institutional assimilation would be the National Language
exclusively (albeit gradually).
In the meantime, the conclusions of the policy review were given formal legislative sanction in the 1961 Education Act. Henceforward, all publicly-financed secondary schooling
had to be conducted in two official languages only, either Malay or English, though Chinese
and/or Tamil could still be taught only as subjects.

Malay secondary education was free,

while government-aided English secondaries had to levy tuition fees.

English and Malay

also became the joint languages of public examination both for entry to, and graduation from,secondary education.

To facilitate the linguistic transition on the part of pupils from Chineseand Tamil Standard-type primaries, a special one-year Remove Class was instituted prior tosecondary level.

Otherwise, those Chinese middle schools that had hitherto qualified forpartial grants-in-aid were now obliged to transform themselves into English or Malay-medium
National secondaries, or else remain unassisted, private enterprises.

The reaction of Sino-phone Chinese to the 1961 enactment was predictably bitter, and many middle schools refused
to comply until financial pressures compelled most to conform to the new policy standard.
doing so, all chose conversion to National-type, as a matter of course.

In

While the Malay

medium achieved formal parity for purposes of secondary education, it was not without irony
that the new policy thus served the expansion of English-language secondary education,
which even tended to attract pupils from the Malay stream.
At this stage there was no suggestion that the grammar school tradition of Malayan education be altered.

As during colonial times, the quality of secondary schooling was still

strongly identified with literary-style academic education.

Popularisation and functional

differentiation of a post-primary education were characteristically impugned and dismissed
for allegedly devaluing scholastic standards.

It was in this light that the policy review fixed

an arbitrary ceiling on the pass rate from primary to secondary level at 30 per cent, based on
past colonial practice.

This then became the criterion for educational planning in the Second

Five-Year Plan (1961-65).8)

For the overflow, quasi-vocational educational alternatives were

set up, in distinct subordination to the grammar-style mainstream, and limited in scope andintent. 9)

The prevailing obsession with grammar school education not only circumscribedthe development of post-primary institutions, but, even more significantly, also restricted thecapacity to cope with functional specialisation. Offcialdom preferred to blame public prejudice for the unpopularity of technical and vocational schooling, though responsibility can be8) Second Five- Year Plan 1961-1965, (Kuala Lumpur, 1961), para 157.
9) At the time there were only two technical secondary schools, and two junior trade schools in the entire
Federation. Under the 1961 policy so-called 'secondary continuation' and 'rural trade' schools were
established as dead-end quasi-vocational alternatives. They never gained popularity and were abolishedonly four years later when more substantial post-primary reforms were introduced.

27

traced directly to the grammar school cult fostered and supported by the education authorities themselves.
The third stage of education institution-building evolved out of economic considerations,which induced a further reform of secondary-level education towards a greater consonancewith development strategy and planning.

The expansion and extension of the old grammari-an format led, by the middle 1960s, to an education policy gap between large and growing
numbers of primary schoolleavers, and emerging as semi-educated unemployed, concurrent
with a shortage of middle and higher calibre professional, technical and vocational skills.
Educational shortcomings had become a limiting factor in economic development.

Concernover the country's lagging economic performance prompted the Alliance government, following the 1964 general election, to inject manpower planning considerations into the education
policy component of the First Malaysia Plan, 1966-70.

In the event, this manpower planning

concept denoted the primacy of development goals even over entrenched educational values,
and paved the way for far reaching changes in the internal organisation and orientation of
secondary education.
The reforms introduced with effect from 1965 divided secondary schooling into two stages,
separated by selection and differing in curriculum.

At the lower secondary stage, admission

was non-selective, open, and the three-year programme offered a so-called 'comprehensive'
curriculum combining academic, technical and crafts subjects.

Post-primary selection was

thus deferred, and the dead-end 'secondary continuation' and 'rural trade' categories abolished.

Upper secondary schooling still remained selective, but was now separated educationallyand organisationally into parallel academic, technical, vocational and teacher training streams.
Agricultural subjects were incorporated in the 'comprehensive' curriculum and, after 1969,
agricultural science was offered as an Upper Secondary (both academic and vocational) alternative.

A pre-university 'Sixth Form' was similary divided into arts, science and technicalstreams.

This institutional realignment of Malaysian education connoted a new policy

conception in moving towards the rationalisation of levels and types of post-primary schoolingin relation to the manpower requirements of the economy.
Although the immediate introduction of open-admission, comprehensive education resulted in an acknowledged fall in standards, especially in the academically-weaker Malaymedium stream, this was now accepted, in the manner of 'positive thinking', as the unavoidable short-run cost of social adaptation for eventual economic development.
The tertiary level of education was to experience at this stage a similar process of institutional reform and innovation.

The country's first institution of higher learning, theUniversity of Malaya (founded in Singapore, 1949, Kuala Lumpur Division, 1957; separation
and autonomy, 1961), was conceived as an English academy for the scholastic elite, which
defined its social composition and educational purpose.

Pressures of events (the combinationof language politics, educational reforms and social trends during the 1960s) brought about the28

M. RUDNER: Education, Development and Change in Malaysia

official adoption of English-Malay bilingualism at the University of Malaya by mid-decade,followed by the establishment of the Malay-language Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia(N ational University of Malaysia) in 1970.

Along with the termination of the English social

and linguistic monopoly came a broadening of the scope and structure of higher education.
Within the conventional universities of the English model, the sciences and technocratic professions were given increasing prominence, a trend reflected in the new foundation set up in
Penang in 1969, subsequently renamed Universiti Sains Malaysia (Malaysian University of
Science).

Moreover, the early 1970s also witnessed the establishment of new types of func-

tionally-specialised tertiary institutions geared to high-level manpower requirements of particular communities in their quest for economic development.

These included the university-

status Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (Malaysian Technological University) and Universiti
Pertanian (University of Agriculture) operating in Malay; and the MARA Institute of Technology and U ngku Omar Polytechnic offering professional and sub-professional courses intechnical and administrative subjects, in Malay and English, respectively.

Additionally for

non-Malays, English-medium pre-university and sub-professional studies were also available
at the Tunku Abdul Rahman College. Malaysian education still retained a scholastic bias,
to be sure, evidenced in the schools' preoccupation with preparing candidates for university,rather than intermediate employment opportunities.

Yet, the emergence of an academicallyand functionally differentiated tertiary structure underlined the policy trend towards aligningeducation institution-building more closely with manpower planning for economic development.
The next stage of educational reform witnessed a revival of the language question, thistime as part of the political search for symbols of national identity.

As the constitutionally-prescribed ten-year term for reviewing its National Language provisions approached in 1967,
the communal controversy over future language rights surfaced with renewed passion andextended, by implication, to education as well.

Language politics revolved around the in-creasingly forceful efforts of the newly emergent, modern, Malay-educated elite, with certain
factional backing from the United Malays National Organisation (UMNO), senior partnerof the Alliance.

Together, these ultra-nationalist components of Malay political life en-

deavored to consolidate the National Language status of Malay and therefore ensure its social
rewards.

An artful Alliance compromise had the National Language Act, 1967, proclaim

Malay the "sole official language" whilst reserving the use of other language for education andcertain other public purposes.

The long-standing inter-communal modus vivendi was pre-served more or less intact, but the ultra-nationalist core of Malay demands remianed unsatisfied.

Malay ultra-nationalism now turned against the rival and non-domiciled English-

language education stream.

Partly to mollify the fervor among Malays, and partly as a ges-ture towards the National Language objective of the Act, the Education Ministry decreed thejuxtaposition of Malay language teaching upon four minor subjects in the first three grades of29

English-medium primary schools, with effect from 1968.

Whereas the Malayanisation of the

English stream had originally been thought of as a quiet and gradual process, the pace ofchange was ultimately to be dictated by political events.
The challenge to Malay political primacy apparent in the 1969 general election results
and culminating in racial violence,lO) propelled Malay nationalism towards a more strenuous
reassertion of the Malay norms of statehood.

As a result, the conversion of English schools

to the Malay language was accelerated and progressed on the basis of a detailed timetable,
subject by subject, year by year, scheduled for completion by 1983.

Thereafter English

would no longer have the status of a main stream language of public instruction.

This would

leave Malay as the only educational language ranging over the primary, secondary and tertiarylevels.

Standard-type schools in the Chinese or Tamil media were as yet unaffected by theconversion timetable.

However, they would in any case be reduced to the status of peripheral,

virtually terminal primary school languages when Malay became the exclusive medium of
post-primary education.
That the target oflinguistic Malayanisation was English-language schooling-rather thanChinese or Tamil-pointed to the current political anxieties of the UMNO leadership, thedominant element in Malaysia's ruling Alliance.

Earlier Malay suspicions about non-Malay

loyalty gradually abated, a tribute to the efficacy of the Razak education policy.
replaced by a new sense of political rivalry over national status questions.

They were

The cataclysmic

events of 1969 indicated to Malays that the newly emergent, nationally-educated, non-Malay
elite had yet to be induced to accept the established political equation for allocating power.
Thus, the conversion of the English stream was calculated to foster shared educational experiences in elite formation, while ensuring that this enculturation process was steeped in
Malay linguistic and national symbols.

The extension of Malay political norms through theeducation system to non-Malays conveyed a double sense of belonging: that non-Malays
belong to Malaysia, while Malaysia belongs to the Malays.
I t is noteworthy that these developments pertained mainly to the territories of peninsular
Malaysia, the former Malaya, and only to a lesser degree to the Eastern Malaysian States of
Sabah and Sarawak.

By constitutional agreement the administration of education in Sabah

and Sarawak has remained under State jurisdiction (though federally financed).

Policies

therefore have differed somewhat from those pursued by the Federal government in peninsular Malaysia.

Lately, however, there has been a marked trend towards conformity with thenational system.
The building of a national education system in Malaysia had to treat with the fundamental problems of language, culture, social change, economics, and politics, which confronted society.

Yet, educational institution-building did not reflect haphazard or ad hoc10) On the Revival of communalist antagonisms in the 1969 elections, see Martin Rudner, 'The Malaysian
General Election of 1969: A Political Analysis', Modern Asz"an Studz"es (1970).

30

M. RUDNER: Education, Development and Change in Malaysia

arrangements.

At each stage it constituted the outcome of considered policy.

These policy

solutions were designed to cope with the complexity of social issues involving education, in
accordance with the multiple goals of government.

Outside the administration, an active

public interest exercised its influence as both a stimulus and constraint on policy, and it issignificant that the stages of education institution-building were broadly coterminous withgeneral elections.

Education policy evolved from an object to an integral subject, or instru-

ment, of national policy-making, producing radical changes in educational organisation andorientations in the process.

II The 'Supply' of Education
Expenditures on education govern the quantum of educational resources placed at thedisposal of society at any given time.

Historically, education in British Malaya was subject

to complex financial treatment, with private and state and central sources participating in its
provision each according to its own lights.

The shift from considerable private to predomi-

nantly public finance of education was matched by the increased predominance of the central
authorities, even more than the constitution obligated.

Adapting public finance to assume

the cost of education institution-building involved the redefinition of certain conventional
economic attitudes, budgetary principles, allocative priorities and administrative goals.
Changes in official attitudes and assumptions regarding the economic utility of education
heralded the changes in actual policies concerning the public finance of education.

In British

Malaya education was commonly viewed as a postitive thing, for its humanistic value as well
as for its role in elite formation.

Yet, this same attitude disclosed certain negative assump-

tions about the economics of education.

Colonial officialdom tended to see education as apurely social service, something good and desirable but offering few direct economic returns. 11)

Education finance was therefore treated as a consumption item in public accounts,

which implicitly depleted the financial resources available for investment in economic growth.
It was symptomatic of the character of colonial rule that those groups allowed to participate in colonial administration generally shared this attitude towards education, especiallythe influential British business interests who regularly insisted that "non-productive" social
spending be "cut according to the cloth" of residual finance.

They were allied to a traditional

Malay elite on the defensive against rural social change.

Even those who pressed for the

expansion of educational finance, mainly professionals, trade unionists and rural Malay
spokesmen, did so on the basis of social service and social welfare criteria rather than in broader development terms, by implication validating the conventional assumptions.

One notable

exception was the newly ascendant UMNO leadership of Tunku Abdul Rahman, who from
11) Vide. The Colonial Empire, 1939-1947, London: HMSO, 1947, Cmd. 7167, p. 107; see also Martin
Rudner, 'The Draft Development Plan of the Federation of Malaya, 1950-1955', Journal oj Southeast
Asian Studies (1973), and Gayl D. Ness, Bureaucracy and Rural Development in Malaysia (Berkeley,1967) esp. Pl'. 100--2.
31

the unofficial side of the colonial Legislative Council very early advocated mass education as alever for Malay economic, social and political advancement. 12 ) Nevertheless, for the dominant colonial power elite there remained the dichotomy between education as a social service,
however worthy its social or cultural objectives, and the hard economics of public finance.
The transition to elected government did not result in a frontal assault on inherited economic doctrine.

Rather, the new Alliance government's inclination towards identifying edu-

cation instrumentally with its emergent national goals served, in effect, to infiltrate an alteredconception of education into public finance.

With the introduction of the 1957 national school

policy, public expenditure on education now came to be redefined as "investment" in the
country's political "future" .13)

Still, conventional economic philosophy had not yet conceiv-

ed of education as being functionally related to economic, as distinct from social or political,
development objectives.

This was to come later, after it became increasingly apparent during

the early 1960s that inadequate human resources constituted a limiting factor for economicplanning.

The Government's development imperative thereupon absorbed education policy

and turned it towards economic ends:" ... the traditional system of education is (now) being reoriented to achieve not only
the objectives of nation-building and universal literacy, but also the economic goalsof the country."14)
This marked a revision of the policy conception of education, from a mere social (or political)
service to a manpower approach centering on human capital formation for economic development .15)
The re-evaluation of educational finance, from budgetary liability to economic resource,
signified a cognitive change in the precepts of public accounting, as well.

Public financial

perspectives shifted over from narrow revenue accounting to broader national and later social
accounting. 16 ) While it may be tempting to explain this movement on the basis of improved
government financial capabilities over time, actually the essence of the change was more infiscal priorities.

Thus, during the late colonial period restrictions were applied to expendi-

tures on education at the same time as substantial reserve balances were being accumulated in
London.

By contrast, the development plans of the 1960s called for greatly expanded public

expenditures on education, even at the expense of running down reserves, and borrowing.
It has not been so much government's ability to afford education, as its willingness, promptedby decisions in the political sphere and articulated through changes in attitudes, that determined the provision of educational finance.
The First Five-Year Plan, introduced in 1956 by the newly-elected Alliance government,
12) Legislative Council Proceedings, 20 September, 1951.
13) Minister of Education, Legislative Council Proceedings, 11 December 1958.
14) First Malaysia Plan, 1966-70 (Kuala Lumpur, 1966), para 491.
15) Ibid., paras. 37, 42-3, 180.
16) cr. Gayl D. Ness, Bureaucracy and Rural Development in Malaysia.
32

M. RUDNER: Education, Development and Change in Malaysia

provided for a considerable expansion of public spending on the capital projects of government
departments and authorities over the quinquennium.!7)

Highest plan priority was assigned

to projects related to the export and nascent industrial sectors, while implementation of the
new national school policy received second priority.

Yet, Education Ministry proposals forsome M$128 m. capital investment were nevertheless pruned by the Treasury's Economic
Secretariat, under the direction of expatriate colonial financial officials, to less than half thatamount.

But even that constituted a three-fold increase, in real terms, over public capital

expenditure on education during the previous five-year period.

Subsequent plans were to

greatly increase the magnitude and scope of public investment, while successive changes
in the priorities and machinery of planning influenced education's share. lS )The much enlarged sums involved in the Second Five-Year Plan, 1961-65, were similarly
devoted mainly to the development of the state apparatus, especially those parts dealing with'economic' or 'productive' undertakings.
of the then-current policy review.

The education target was addressed to the objects

Educational objectives were expressed rather simplisticallyin terms of crude enrolment and demographic relationships.

Overall planning perspectives

remained fundamentally unaltered, although this Second Five-Year Plan hint at social accounting contained the germ of a new ingredient for education planning.

The next plan,termed the First Malaysia Plan, 1966-70, emphasised the mobilisation of investable resources
for accelerated economic growth, and in so doing treated education as a factor for humancapital formation.

Later, social and economic criteria for education planning were brought

together and refined in the Second Malaysia Plan of 1971-75, with reference to its radical
goal of "restructuring" society along more "balanced" lines of economic attainment between
Malays and non-Malays.

The Third Malaysia Plan 1976-80, aimed at a strategy of conquer-ing poverty, on strata rather than purely racial lines.!9)

Objectives of employment, social

mobility and economic nationalism thus rendered education into an integral component ofplanning for development of the economy.
This evolving planning role for education had a zigzag effect on the ratio of educational
investment under the plans. Capital appropriations for education increased absolutely overthe successive quinquennia, to be sure. The relative proportion of total public investment
devoted to education grew in the earlier departmentalised Five-Year Plans, from eight percent of the First to 12 per cent of the Second.

There followed a decline, paradoxically, underthe macro-economic Malaysia Plans (Peninsular Malaysia figures in brackets) to 11.6 (10.3)
17) This Plan, so-called, was never actually published, but its particulars were made known in the Report on
Economic Planning in the Federation ol Malaya in 1956, Legislative Council Paper 14 of 1956. For
a study of this plan and its place in Malaysian economic history, see Martin Rudner, Nationalism, Plannz'ng and Economic llIodcrnization in Malaysia, (Beverly Hills, Calif., 1975).
18) For an historical survey of planning in Malaya, see David Lim, 'Malaysia', in Vip Vat Hoang, ed"
Development Planning in Southeast Asia: Role of the University (Singapore, 1973), and Martin Rudner,
iVationalism) Planning and Economic j1/j'odernisatz"on in Mala.-ysia.
19) Third J,.falaysia Plan 1976-1980 (Kuala Lumpur, 1976), Prime Minister's Foreward, 'lJ-'llii.

33per cent in the First, and again to 7.4 (6.3) per cent in the Second, rising with the priority ofsocial development to 9.4 per cent of the mid-term revision of the Second Malaysia Plan andstabilising at 9.1 (8.4) per cent of the Third. 20 )The closer integration of education into

macro-economic planning was more than merely a gesture in the direction of popular social
services.

Indeed, the more integrated approach to educational planning led also to increased

public investment 'downstream' from the education system, in employment-related industrial
developments.

In the event, developmental priorities were allocated somewhat differently by actual patterns of public finance, compared to the original plans.

Malaysian planning experience dis-closes regular and significant divergence in the sectoral distribution of public investment
between original plans and their implementation.

On the whole, economic and administ-

ration/security planning targets were achieved, and usually overfulfilled, while social sector
objectives remained chronically underfulfilled.
Ecucation shared the social sector shortfall, though the degree of plan underfulfillment
depended on the place of education in the current development strategy as well as government
motives and commitment.

The First Five-Year Plan achieved only 62 per cent of its edu-

cation expenditure target, slightly less than the social sector average, displaying the discontinuities between education planning and public finance.

Subsequently, development strate-

gy become more consistent in the Second Five-Year Plan, so that its education target was 91
per cent fulfilled, a level unprecedented for social development.

Afterward, the shift in em-

phasis from fiscal outlays to structural reforms in the First Malaysia Plan saw the rate of plan
fulfillment drop to 70 per cent, far inferior to the 77 per cent social sector average (all-Malaysia
figures; rates for Peninsular Malaysia were 77.9 and 80.8 per cent, respectively).

Educationplan fulfillment rose again under the renewed urgency of the Second Malaysia Plan to 88 percent of the revised mid-term target, compared to 94 per cent for the social services and 95 percent for public investment overall. 21 )The ratio of (public) investment in education to total public investment under the plans
experienced a similarly chequered trend.

Between the First and Second Five-Year Plans theratio increased from six to nine per cent as the policy focus shifted from the primary to thesecondary level, and commitments entered high gear over the Rahman Talib policy review.
The ratio reduced to 7.7 (Peninsular Malaysia: 7.9) per cent of the First Malaysia Plan, butclimbed again to 8.7 (9.5) per cent in response to the ethnic re-structuring goals of the revised
Second Malaysia Plan.
Objective difficulties exacerbated the effects of policy and ~dministrative ambivalence.
Arguably, a good part of the persistent shortfall in public investment in education represented20) If non-defence-related expenditure only be considered, the Peninsular share for education rose from 6.3
per cent of the First Five-Year Plan to 12.6 per cent of the Second, falling to 11.5 per cent of the First
Malaysia Plan and further to 7.6 per cent of the Second, and rising to 10.3 per cent of the Third.
21) Third Malaysia Plan table 22-9.

34

Table 1 Malaysian Development Plan Targets 1956-75(M$ million)--===:::--===,.,;,=First FYP

Total
publicinvestment
Economic
SectorThird
Malaysia Plan

Second Malaysia PlanFirst Malaysia Plan

Second FYP

Plan

ActualPlan

ActualPlan*

Est.
Actual*Plan

ActualPlan*

Actual*Plan

Revised

Est.
ActualI·
Peninsular Ma aysla

(1)

(2)

(3)

(4)

(5)

(6)

(7)

(8)

(9)

(10)

(11)

(12)

(13)

(14)

1148. 71007.02150.03610.24556.94242.97250.010255. 4 9920

(15)

~
:;0

c:
tl
zttl

::tI

ttl

780.4

760.2

1477.92651. 7 3153.6

1763.72228.72210.82710.22685.45868. 21 8075. 8

3898. 76 5771. 9

4870.97349. 77127

15445. 7 18554. 910475. 5 12665. 1

0..
c
n

eo·

.?
t::J
Cb

<

Cb

0"
:3
Cb

"0

Social Sector

277.9

138.9

491. 0

413.6

797.4

644.7

975.3

752.1

836.021132.61067.41431. 01449

2511. 33092.1

g
Il:>

::l
0..
(J

- of which
Education

95.4

60.9

260.0

236.0

368.0

286.9

470.8

329.4

370.11

765.6

337

963.8

866.6

1296.91691. 3

::r
Il:>

::l
aq
Cb

5·
GeneralAdmin. andSecurity

90.4

108.0

181. 1

474.4

687.5

754.7

865.4

804.9

1133.34 1171. 3

1311. 71474.71344

2458.82797.6

e:.

Il:>

'<
rn
------* Peninsular Malaysia-Malaya, only.
Source: Report on Economic Planning in the Federation of Malaya in 1956; First Malaysia Plan; Second It:falaysia Plan; Treasury Report, 197576; Third Malaysia Plan.

~

~

Pi·

scarcities of suitable resources, pedagogical and other, especially at the more specialised
secondary and technical levels and in East Malaysia.

The accelerated expansion of educationin recent years telescoped the normal gestation period for resource creation, inevitably causing
bottlenecks for further expansion and refinement. 22)

These scarcities retarded educational

investment even when funds were available, though mis-allocations of actual investment (egthe lags in teacher training) compounded the inadequacy of the educational resources baseover the long run.
The allocation of public investment whitin the education system, among the different
levels and types of schooling, spelled out the goals and perspectives attached to government's'supply' of education.

A detailed breakdown of expenditures for the earlier period of plan-ning is not available. However it may be inferred that the First Five-Year Plan invested comparatively heavily in the expansion of primary education in order to realize the policy objectives propounded by the Razak Committee.

This was eased under the Second Five-Year

Plan, by which time the policy review had re-directed the emphasis towards National-type
secondary education.

Subsequently, the integral manpower approach adopted in theFirst Malaysia Plan brought about a further re-allocation of internal investment priorities in
education (Table 2).

Post-primary education now absorbed over three-quarters of actual

public investment in education over the 1966-70 quinquennium, with the bulk going to thesecondary (51.9 per cent) and university (12.6 per cent) levels.

Even so, the secondary school

investment target remained underfulfilled almost by half, while for the much vaunted technical type (secondary) schools the investment short fall amounted to nearly 65 per cent.

Teach-

er training suffered an even more severe investment lag, ironically in view of the pronounced
shortage of qualified teaching staff for the schools.
Table 2

By comparison the universities did rela-

Internal Distribution of Development Expenditure by Level of
Education, Penninsular Malaysia, 1966-1975(M$ million)
First Malaysia Plan

Second Malaysia Plan

Plan

Est.
ActualPer cent
Fulfillment

(1)

(2)

(3)

Primary school level

54.6

48.5

88.8

87.4

80.2

91. 8

Secondary school level

188. 7

100.7

53.4

133. 2

138.0

103.6

Revised
Plan
(4)

Est.
ActualPer cent
Fulfillment

(5)

(6)

Technical school level

30.8

10.8

35. 1

34.0

25.7

75.6

University level

30.0

24.4

81. 3

235.4

198.5

84.3

Teacher training

28.5

9.7

34.0

9.0

3.6

40.0

7.7

6.6

85.7

Higher Technical level
Notes:

Figures do not total the aggregate given in Table 1, due to the omission of training and otherprogrammes financed under the 'Education and Training' item in the plan.
Sources: Second Malaysia Plan; Third Malaysia Plan.
22) Cf. Second hIalaysia Plan. p. 231.

36

M. RUDNER: Education, Development and Change in Malaysia

tively well in Malaysia, as elsewhere, having attained over 80 per cent fulfillment by way of
attracting a disproportionate-in terms of enrolments, at least-share of realised public investment.

This distribution of education investment continued in the Second Malaysia Plan;

despite the nominal overfulfillment of the secondary school target, its actual allocation of real
investment resources, discounted for inflation, had scarcely been augmented over the quinquennium.

The actual distribution of education investment superimposed, in effect, its own

pattern of institution building onto the original policy scheme.
The ensuing balance of investment in education represented an effective demotion of thepriority of secondary schooling, and teacher training most of all, in favour of enhanced tertiarylevel development.

Although the disparity between plan and realisation for secondary school-

ing was corrected in the Second Malaysia Plan, the distributive balance remained much thesame.

Development emphasis on the elitist tertiary level discriminated against populist pro-

gression in secondary schooling, and (because of laggard investment in teacher training)tended to sacrifice the calibre of primary education.

Yet, this operational re-definition of

investment priorities seems to have occured haphazardly, without regard for rationality in thedevelopment of educational resources.

Such deviations from planned institutional priorities

consequently lowered the efficiency of investment in educational development.
Internal rates of return attributable to the various levels and types of schooling provide aconvenient indicator of the net marginal revenue product of education investment, together
with attendant current outlays.23)

In his pioneering study of the returns to Malaysian edu-

cation, made half-way through the First Malaysia Plan period, a.E. Hoerr 24 ) concluded thatfor Peninsular Malaysia (e.g. Malaya), at least, educational investment yields a comparatively
high average revenue product, socially as well as privately (Table 3).

Internal net social

rates of return to all levels of education were judged favourably, compared to the officiallydetermined public opportunity cost of capital~ set at 10 per cent. 25 )In particular, secondary-23) The internal Rate of Return to education is that discount Rate that equates the discounted flow of education costs to the discounted flow of income benefits, and is the equivalent of the net marginal revenue
product of education capital; 'vide. T. Schultz, 'Capital Formation by Education,' Journal of Political
Economy (1960) and G. Becker, Human Capital (New York, 1960). On the limitations of education
investment analysis, and Rate of Return models generally, see Stephen Merrett, 'The Rate of Return to
Education: A Critique', Oxford Economic Papers (1966), pp. 289-303.
24) O. E. Hoerr, 'Education, Income and Equity in Malaysia,' Reprinted in Readings on lVfalaysian Economic Development. ed. David Lim (1975). This remains the only study of the returns to education capitalin Malaysia, to date. The distinction between social and private rates of return reflect the usual differences in the education costs actually incurred by the state and private beneficiary, on the one hand, anddiscontinuities in the flow of benefits from education in 'insulated' labour markets like Malaysia, on theother. Ozay Mehmet, 'Manpower Planning and Labour Markets in Developing Countries: A Case
Study of West Malaysia', Journal of Development Studies (1972), pp. 277-289.
25) This is the rate used by the Economic Planning Unit of Malaysia for weighing social preferences in public
investment. Another rate for comparison would be the interest rate earned on overseas reserve balances
accumulated owing to the long-standing Treasury 'Reserves Syndrome'. In 1969, yields on long-term
US and UK government bonds, an indicator of the Returns to Malaysian Official Overseas Reserves, ranged from 7.48 to 8.82 per cent; Bank Negara Malaysia, Annual Report and Statement of Accounts, 1970
(1971), pp. 7-8.

37

Table 3

Internal Rates of Return to Education in Peninsular Malaysia, 1967-8

Net
PrivateNet
SocialGross
PrivateNet
PrivateCumulative
Social Benefit/Cost
Ratio at 10% Discount
Rate

(3)

(4)

(5)

(6)

(7)

Marginal

Cumulative
- __
_..

Net
Social. ~ . ~ _ . _ . " " . _ . _ - - - _ . -GrossPrivate(1)(2)'Sixth Form'

8.2
11. 9
13.6
13. 2

29.5
45.5
52.0
52.8

12.9
17.0
17.6
17.1

8.2
15.6
15.3
12.8

29.5
61. 5
65.0
55.3

12.9
21.1
18.9
15.6

0.82
1. 06
1. 28
1. 31

University(domestic)

9.5

49.7

16.0

5.8

37.2

14.4

0.92

Primary level
Lower Secondary
Upper Secondary

Source: Hoerr, Education, Income and Equity in Malaysia.

level schooling demonstrated higher social and private returns than the primary or even university levels, well above the opportunity cost of capital.

This was so despite a relatively

high unemployment rate among non-specialised, lower-secondary schoolleavers. 26)

In thesecircumtances, the high net returns to secondary education testified to the significant economic
potential for siutably equipped middle-echelon manpower.

Laggard investment in secondary

education, and the application of strict selectivity rules above the comprehensive lower
secondary level, would therefore seem to imply considerable opportunity costs in terms ofincremental educational returns forgone.
Applying cumulative social benefit/cost ratios to the various levels of education, at a 10
per cent social time preference rate, it appears that public expenditure on post-primary education was generally profitable.

Although primary schooling produced social returns slightly

below the opportunity cost of capital, these costs have come to be regarded more as indivisible
investment in the substructure of educational capital formation, particularly after the introduction of open-access, comprehensive lower-secondary education.

While the university

ratio was, on average, marginally inferior to that of the secondary level, this may understate
the contribution of the very remunerative professional and technical faculties~ as well as theresearch and consultancy functions of universities.

On the whole, the comparatively advan-

tageous social returns to education were exceeded by the respective private rates of return,which again proved especially favourable for secondary-level education.

In his factoring ofincome flows, Hoerr has estimated that education may account for some 60 per cent of unadjusted money incomes in Peninsular Malaysia, though this reduces upon adjustment for
unemployment and labour-force participation rates in inverse relationship with levels of educational attainment. 27)
Education institution-building was also marked by a greatly increased ratio of (public)
education expenditures to national income.

The portion of GNP devoted to public education,26) Ibid., p. 91; Second Malaysia Plan, pp. 99-100.
27) Hoerr, loco cit., pp. 295-6.

38

M. RUDNER: Education, Development and Change in Malaysia

indicated by total public sector expenditure (development and current) on formal schooling at
all levels, grew from less than two per cent at the end of the colonial period to over three percent by the end of the First Five-Year Plan, to some 4-3/4 per cent at the end of the Second
Five-Year Plan, even considering adjustments for the formation of Malaysia.

After a slightdecline under the First Malaysia Plan, the ratio reached well beyond five per cent of Malaysian
GNP mid-way through the Second. 28 )Pupil numbers had grown by a factor of three, yet thelevel of public expenditure on education per pupil enrolled rose almost three-fold, in real terms,
between 1955 and 1973 (Table 4).
Rates of expenditure reflected the intensity of government goal commitment for eachstage of education institution-building or reform.

For independent Malaya/Malaysia, themost rapid rate of increase of educational expenditures occurred during the First and Second
Five Year Plan and Second Malaysia Plan periods.

These plan quinquennia constituted

particular stages of policy which emphasised the primacy of educational goals pertaining to
the social and political systems.

Developments in education were instrumentally related tocertain compelling political objectives at each stage, which induced higher public financial
priorities for the purpose.

The rate of increase of public expenditure on education was low-

est, in real terms less than the gorwth of enrolments, under the First Malaysia Plan.

There issome irony in that that period coincided with the primacy of educational goals relating toeconomic objectives, but with little or no political urgency attached.

Official attitudes andpolicy had integrated education into economic development strategy at the time, without,
however, ensuring the warranted capital and current commitments.

In Malaysian practice,

the realisation of financial commitments derived more from political motivations than from
Table 4

MalayaMalaysia

Public Educational Capital Formation 1955-73
(3)

(4)

(2) as percent of (1)(2) per
pupil enrolled(1967 prices*)(5)
Average annual
rate of growthof real (2)*(per cent)(1)
GNP
at market
prices(M$ million)(2)
Total public
expenditure
on education(M$ million)

1955

4992

86

1. 72

5626

179

3. 18

[111J
149

[20.4J

1960
1963

6362

283

4.44

215

15.7

1965

[8637J
11617

411

4.75

260

1970

521

4.48

228

1973

16634

947

5.69

310

3.9
11. 3

*Retail price index (1967 : 190) pertains to peninsular Malaysia only, while aggregate expenditures apply to all Malaysia.
Source: Economic Reports, 1973-74,1974-75; First Malaysia Plan; Second Malaysia Plan, adapted.
Note:28) The so-called 'Karachi Plan' for education in Asia, to which Malaysia subscribed, envisaged the expenditure of four to five per cent of GNP on formal education only by 1980; UNESCO and ECAFE, Final
Report, Meetz'ng of Alinisters of Education of Asian Member States Participating in the K aracht' Plan,
Tokyo, 2-11 April, 1962, (Bangkok, 1962). The 'Karachi Plan' was adopted in 1959.

39

economic purpose,jer se.

Economic ends may have provided a rationale for resource mobili-

sation on behalf of education, however actual commitments depended on the political imperatives that effectively governed educational 'supply' in relation to determined policy goals.

III The 'Demand' for Education
Enrolments reveal the effective social demand for education at each level for each type ofschooling.

School enrolments in Malaysia are voluntary i.e. not legally compulsory, and fee-paying at post-primary levels, for the non-Malay population.

Historically, only Malays wereaccorded free education, extended in the 1960s through to the secondary and tertiary levels.
Primary schooling for non-Malays was made free in 1962 in 'Standard-type' institutions, as asweetener for the controversial secondary school reforms, though the colonial custom obliging
government-aided secondaries to provide a margin of 10 per cent free places for the (nonMalay) poor has been retained.

'Free' education, in the Malaysian usage, has meant freetuition only; and while conceding that children of poor families (Malay as well as non-Malay)
have had difficulty meeting the attendant costs of schooling, government has pleaded financial
stringencies for not making 'free' education wholly free.
to make primary education compulsory.

Neither has government seen fit

Instead, its policy has been to 'assure' school place

for all qualified children up to (from the 1970s) age 15.

This facile substitution of assurances

for compulsory attendance relieved government of the burden of providing for genuinely universal primary education, while shifting the onus of enrolment over onto society-at-Iarge.
Nevertheless, the provision of places and extension of free and aided schooling produced anotable institutional change as the once strong private school sector declined to relative unimportance while incremental enrolment concentrated in public education. 29)
The total school population of British Malaya prior to the Second World War was to theorder of 263,000 enrolled. 30)

Enrolments subsequently increased sharply in post-war years,

reaching over three-quarters of a million in Malaya alone by the middle 1950s (plus an additional158,000 in Singapore).

This accelerated growth of enrolments denoted a far-reachingchange in public attitudes towards education. 31 )To be sure, the surge in enrolments resulted

in part from pent-up demand from the war years and difficult aftermath.

Of greater long-run

significance, however, was the wider recognition accorded the value of education, which, coupl29) At the primary level in 1974, private schools, mainly Chinese, comprised one per cent of all schools andenrolled a half per cent of all pupils. At the secondary level private schools, mainly English, comprised
18 per cent of all schools (excluding, however, technical and vocational schools) and enrolled just overseven per cent of all pupils: Education in Malaysia) 1974, annex 2. Note that figures supplied for
Malaysian education refer to enrolments, rather than attendance. Since there is usually a gap between
enrolment and actual attendance, especially in poor and rural areas, this reduces the usefulness of official
statistics for measuring real educational attainments. However, the enrolment figures do provide, atleast, an indicator of trends in social participation in education.
30) Figures in this paragraph are from the IBRD, The Economic Developments of Malaya.
31) Lim Chong Yah, The Economic Development of 1I10dern Malaya (Kuala Lumpur, 1967), p. 305.

40

M. RUDNER: Education, Development and Change in Malaysia

ed with rising incomes, translated into an increasing public appetite for formal, secular schoolling.

Expanded private demand for education was reinforced by its growing social utility, in

as much as the post-war expansion of government service and economic developments generally produced broader employment opportunities for educated manpower.

Unfortunately,

the inadequate provision for education in colonial public finance restricted the capacity ofexisting educational facilities to cope with both the demand backlog as well as current demand
from the rapidly increasing school-age population.

Consequently, the ratio of primary-level

enrolments out of the eligible age group actually declined during the first half of the 1950s,
to approximately 58 per cent in 1954,32) notwithstanding the expansion of numbers.
Self-government led to institutional reforms and policy goals that gave rise to a dramatic
upsurge in primary school intake.

In order to maximize the effects of the Razak Committeeprescriptions, the Alliance government declared its intention to accommodate all children of
age 7+ who so desire in Standard or Standard-type primary schools by 1960. This output

target explicity acknowledged a likely fall in scholastic quality ("it is better to offer a slightly
lower standard of education temporarily than no education at all"). 33) Government evenaccepted the possibility of deficit financing in order to bring this about, a radical departurefrom the fiscal norms of the past.
Responding to government's commitment, Malayan primary school enrolments reached
the one-million mark already in 1958, two years ahead of target.

A good part of thissudden increase in fact consisted of over-age pupils whose schooling had been forcibly deferred.

And yet there was no slack in enrolments as this backlog was made up.

Demand forprimary education now shifted in favour of more widespread and longer schooling on the partof the appropriate age groups.
return current for primaryThis was no doubt inspired by the favourable private rates ofand post-primary education, stimulated still further by policy

innovations including the introduction of free primary schooling (for non-Malays) in 1962.
Primary enrolments continued their rise, though the average annual rate of increase slowed
down from 7.5 per cent during the 1955-60 era to around 3 per cent, equivalent to the rate of
population growth, thereafter.

The effect of this was to very nearly double the total primaryschool population of peninsular Malaysia between 1955 znd 1973, to over 1-1/2 million enrolled.
Primary enrolments in the East Malaysian States of Sabah and Sarawak, where education
was administratively separate from the Federal centre, displayed an even more rapid growthrate arising out of their comparatively lower starting poir~t.

Nevertheless, apart from a rapid

short-term increase immediately following the formation of Malaysia, the longer run growthtrend of primary enrolment in Sabah and Sarawak for the decade 1964-74 scarcely betteredthat for the earlier period of British rule, 1955-64 (Table 5).
32) IBRD, The Econom£c Development of Malaya, pp. 142 ff.
33) Minister of Education, Federat£on of Malaya Leg£slatz've Coundl Proceed£ngs 15, Nov. 1956.

41

Table 5

Primary-Level Enrolments, 1955-1973

Peninsular Malaysia
Enrolment('000)

Sabah and Sarawak

Index(1955=100)

Enrolment Ratio l(per cent)Enrolment('000)

Index(1955= 100)

1955
1958

776

100

58

92

100

1, 007120

1, 125
1, 197

86
90

142

130
154
175

1968

1, 371

129
145
154
177

na

1960
1964

91

250

272

1973

1, 531

197

91

252 2

317

161

Enrolment Ratio: enrolment as proportion of eligible age group for primary-level education.
1974
na: not available
Sources: Educat£onal Stat£st£cs of Malays£a 1937 to 1967; Educat£onal Stat£st£cs of Malays£a 1969;
Education in Malays£a 1974; Progress of Education in the Asian Region; a Stat£stical Revz'ew.
12More significant than mere numerical growth has been the real and very substantial improvement in the ratio of primary school enrolments to their eligible age groups in Peninsular
Malaysia (no data is available on enrolment ratios for the East Malaysian States).

This

ratio stood at about 58 per cent in 1955, at the end of the colonial era in Malayan education.
Increased enrolments accompanying the first stage of policy reform elevated this ratio to 86
per cent five years later.

Since a large but uncertain portion of the primary school popu-

lation then consisted of over-age backlog, the effective ratio for the properly eligible age groupwas somewhat less than this aggregate figure appears to indicate.
overcome, around the middle 1960s, the distortion disappeared.

Once this backlog was

Growing demand for prima-

ry education among the currently eligible age group brought the effective ratio to 90 per centin 1964, stabilising at just over 91 per cent by the late 1960s, early 19705.

Primary education

had become mass public education, though still not quite universal education.
Stabilization of the enrolment ratio at 90-91 per cent implied, conversely, that about 9
per cent of the eligible age group remained consistently outside the scope of formal primaryeducation.

These presumably comprised the socially remote and economically most dis-advantaged segments of the population.

Foredoomed by their lack of even elementary school-

ing, at a time of rising educational levels in the community generally, this hard core ofcational impoverishment represented the long-run social cost of the falure to utilize
compulsory means of attaining universal primary education.
Along with higher enrolment ratios, a marked improvement has been recorded in the
education of females, particularly in Peninsular Malaysia.

Female enrolments persistently

lagged during the colonial period, despite the efforts of educators.

Only 44 per cent of Ma-

laya's eligible female age group was enrolled in primary school, in 1953, compared to over 78
per cent of the male group, with females constituting only 37 per cent of total primary-level42M. RUDNER: Education, Development and Change in Malaysia

enrolments as late as 1955. 34 )Under-enrolment of females gave way before the expansion of

popular demand for education accompanying the policy changes after independence.

The

ratio of female enrolment grew to 89 per cent of the eligible female age group by the late 1960s,
so that slightly less than 49 per cent of total primary-level enrolments consisted of girls. 35 )That proportion remained virtually constant into the 1970s, for Peninsular Malaysia.

Else-where there was a greater imbalance in East Malaysia, though there the female proportion had
grown from 40 per cent in 1963 to 45 per cent of primary enrolment a decade later. 36)
Higher female enrolment rates contributed, paradoxically, to the lowering of private andsocial returns to education especially at the primary level, where females were concentrated.
This was because the female population, constituting now about half of primary enrolments,
generally experienced lower rates of absorption into the labour force.

And, among thoseabsorbed, females, whatever their educational attainments, invariably suffered wage or salary
discrimination.

Nonetheless, the spread of education among the female population suggests

the likelihood of increasing female participation and at higher-levels in the labour force infuture.

Moreover, the recent expansion of female enrolments contains the prospect of inter-

generation transmission of the values being inculcated, with long-run effects on cultural attitudes and social behaviour.
The demand for education also revealed itself in vastly improved retention ratios for successive cohorts of primary schoolers.

Prolongation of primary education signified a real

gain in sustained, effective enrolment.

Previously, not only were the aggregate enrolment

rates low, but pupil 'wastage' was also inordinately heavy.

Retention ratios for colonial

Malayan primary schools as late as the 1950-55 period averaged a mere 32 per cent .37)

Be-

tween 1957 and 1962, the accelerated demand for primary education also took the form ofgreater continuity of schooling, boosting the retention ratio to over 80 per cent.

Then, with

the introduction of free non-Malay primary schooling, the 1962 cohort experienced the retention of some 84 per cent of its initial enrolment.

(It is noteworthy that retention ratios forfemales were still lower than for males, 78 as compared to 88 per cent).

The improvement,

though impressive, was still incomplete, so that it served ironically to accentuate the relative
deprivation of the disadvantaged.

Educational 'wastage' on the current scale has tended toexacerbate the already existent social gap in the universality of primary education, particularly
since the enrolments of those retained in the school system has become all the more 'effective'
educationally. 38)
34) Federatz'on of Malaya Annual Report, 1953, p. 173; Progress of Educatz'on z'n the Asian Regz'on, pp. 9091, Table A8.
35) Educatz'onal Statz'stz'cs of Malaysia 1938 to 1967 (Kuala Lumpur, 1968), Tables 4-11.
36) Educatz'on z'n Malaysz'a, 1974, annexes 1, 3, 9.
37) Figures in this paragraph are from UNESCO, Regional Office for Education in Asia, Long Term Projectz'ons for Education in Malaysz'a (Bangkok, 1962), p. 13; and Progress in Educatz'on in the Asz'an
Regz'on, p. 111, table A15. These retention ratios apply to peninsular Malaysia only.
38) On Retention Ratios and the effectiveness of primary enrolment, see 'The Problem of Educational Wastage'in Bulletz'n of the UNESCO Regional Office for Education z'n Asz'a, Vol. 1 (1967).

43

The growth of primary-level enrolments disclosed variations in the demand for education in and among the four linguistic streams over the successive policy stages.

Such vari-ations denoted changes in 'taste', or social preferences, for educational languages, temperedby the accent of government policy.

The demand for English language education grew most

rapidly during the last decade of colonial rule, though relatively high rates of growth of enrolment also occurred in the Malay and, to a lesser extent, Chinsee streams (Table 6), despite
adverse circumstances.

The education language reform of 1957 inspired increased rates ofenrolment for the Chinese, Tamil and, to a lesser degree, Malay streams, even if incremental
demand still favoured English by a wide margin.

However, Chinese medium primary school-

ing subsequently declined, absolutely as well as relatively, following the adoption of the national (Rahman Talib) secondary education policy.
English stream.

Most of the shift in enrolments went to theThis preference for English education was ultimately reversed by the de-cision to gradually convert the English stream to the National Language. 39 )1960s English enrolments therefore fell off suddenly and drastically.

From the late

A small part of thedemand shift reverted to the Chinese stream, which now terminated at the primary level.
However, the main gains in enrolment were recorded by the Malay stream, which exclusively
offered assured post-primary continuity of language.

Malay stream enrolments thus acceler-ated during the second half of the 1960s and first half of the 1970s at nearly three times therate for primary education as a whole.
Differential growth rates for the various streams, as policies unfolded, yielded a changing
linguistic balance at the primary education level.

After the first decade of reform, the lin-

guistic balance showed a significant movement away from Chinese and towards English
language education.

Compared to 1956 (figures in brackets), by 1966 the Malay and Tamil

medium schools continued to attract a virtually constant 45 and 6 per cent, respectively, of
total primary enrolments, whereas the English rose to 21.5 per cent (15.6 per cent) at the expense of a Chinese decline to 27.5 per cent (33.6 per cent).

Eight years later, the evolution of

educational language policy had engineered a dramatically altered linguistic distribution of
Table 6

Primary Enrolment Trends by Language Stream, Peninsular Malaysia

Malay Stream

English Stream

Chinese Stream

Tamil Stream

All Streams

Year

No.

Index

No.

Index

No.

Index

No.

Index

No.

Index

1947
1956
1961
1966
1974

170,693
392,012503,041575,991
942,479

100
229
295
337
552

57,013
135,875
218, 100
275,848
61,846

100
238
382
484
108

190,349
291,224
378,031352,517
470,472

100
153
198
185
247

35.38648, 21264,35576,691
79,814

100
136
182
217
225

453, 441
867, 323
1,163,527
1,281,047
1,554,611

100
191
256
282
343

Source: Educational Statistics of }I-:lalaysia 1938-1967; Education in Malaysia, 1974
39) The conversion of English primaries to the Malay medium, began in earnest in 1969 and was to be completed by 1975; the secondary level by 1980; sixth form by 1982.

44

M. RUDNER: Education, Development and Change in Malaysia

enrolment.

Over 60 per cent of the primary population were now enrolled in Malay medium

schools, 30 per cent in Chinese schools, 5 per cent in Tamil schools, leaving a residual 4 percent in English schools pending completion of their conversion to National Language Standard. The displacement of English schooling by policy means led to a slight revival of Chinesemedium education, but more importantly to the emergence of Malay for the first time as thelanguage of instruction for the majority of enrolments and on an increasingly multi-racial
basis. This trend towards the decommunalisation of Malay-medium education, as its shareof primary level enrolment began to exceed the Malay proportion of the school population(Table 7), implied new meaning for the term, 'National Language.'
Expanded primary enrolments, coupled to generally rising educational aspirations,exerted increasing demand pressure on access to post-primary levels of education.

Transition

ratios, indicating the actual proportions continuing through to higher levels of schooling, haveremained relatively inflexible, however.

Institutional and policy-inspired rigidities, largely

eliminated at the primary level, remained to restrict the demand-responsiveness of postprimary education.

These rigidities were not happenstance, but can be traced to the atti-

tudinal legacy of colonial post-primary education policy.

British Malayan secondary edu-

cation had been modelled on the archetype English grammar school, and was intended as
preparation for higher administrative and professional roles.

Strict selectivity was applied,and operated according to officially prescribed optimal (actually, maximal) transition ratios,
in pursuit of elitist standards. 40)

As a result, secondary-level enrolment ratios were kept com-paratively low, at about 11 per cent of the eligible age group at the end of the colonial period.
Restricted orientation plus selectivity combined to ensure a strong upper class bias in thesetransition and post-primary enrolment ratios.
Table 7

Peninsular Malaysia: Enrolments by Race and Level of Education, 1970-75
1970

Malay
Primary

1975

Chinese Indian Others

Total

Malay

Chinese Indian Others

Total

%

759,064 511,729 142,147 8,529 1,421,469
53.4
36.0
10.0
0.6
100.0

875,975 550,064151,7449,126 1,586,909
55.2
9.6
0.5
100.0
34.7

Lower
secondary

193,054 146,872%
Uppersecondary36, 339 2, 270

51. 0

38.8

9.6

0.6

378,535
100.0

305,700 198,493
54.4
35.4

54,290 2,988
9.7
0.5

561,471
100.0

10,420 1,108

167, 109

43,62738,8006,258

715

89,400101, 486

54,095

%

48.8

43.4

7.0

0.8

100.0

60.7

32.4

6.2

0.7

100.0

Post
secondary

4,609

106

6,617

804

1.0

54.0

40.5

4.9

97
0.6

16,335

6.0

10,619
100.0

8,817

43.4

5, 267
49.6

637

%

100.0

Source: Third 111alaysia Plan.
40) The IBRD Report, Economic De1!elopment of Malaya, p. 465, cites colonial Education Ministry sources
for setting the education constituency for grammar-type secondary education at a maximum of 20 per centof the eligible age group. The optimal transition ratio was accordingly fixed at 30 per cent.

45

The narrow conception of post-primary educational purpose and constituency persisted
also after self-government.

Restriction was now justified by academic heritage.

Obsessions

with grammar-type schooling conditioned official attitudes towards post-primary continuationeven at a time of reform in other areas.

Hence, the old colonial ceiling on the ratio of entry

into secondary-level education, at 30 per cent, was reiterated by the Rahman Talib review
committee and afterwards incorporated in the Second Five-Year Plan as its norm for postprimary educational planning.

Overflow demand was to be separated out and diverted toquasi-vocational, terminal subsidiaries.

Distinctly inferior both status-wise and educational-

ly, these pseduo-differentiated alternatives failed to attract susbtantial enrolments.

Aggre-

gate secondary-level enrolment increased more than five-fold during the decade since 1955,
though relatively low transition ratios testified to the existence of considerable unsatisfied
demand.
The secondary school reforms of 1965 aimed at reconciling traditional educational perspectives with the mounting pressures of demand.

By the mid-1960s Peninsular Malaysia's

aggregate secondaty-Ievel enrolment ratio stood at 25 per cent.

With the introduction thatyear of open-access 'comprehensive' lower-secondary schooling, enrolments at this level grew
to encompass 60 per cent of the eligible age group by 1974 (Table 8).

Access to upper-

secondary education, which now included parallel academic (arts and science), technical andvocational streams, remained selective still.

Consequently, whereas enrolments in upper-

secondaries increased steadily, the enrolment ratio for 1974 was still below 25 per cent.
Further selectivity applied at the 'Sixth Form' and college levels, such that their combined
enrolment ratio reduced to 6.6 per cent, and again at the university level, where the ratio stoodat just over one per cent, notwithstanding the great expansion of student numbers over thelate 1960s, early 1970s.

Selectivity, in the recent Malaysian experience, amounted to morethan just a test of educational achievement, in as much as the public examination mechanism
was commonly wielded as an instrument for juxtaposing other policy objectives onto the education system.
Institutional and policy constrictions not only depressed levels of enrolment, but furthermore tended to distort the structure of demand for post-primary education.

The National

Language requirements built into the examination mechanism, for one thing, has tended to beparticularly interdictive to those in the English or Chinese or Tamil streams with a propensity
for scientific or technological studies. 41 )Conversely, the utilization of fee discrimination,by which post-primary education was free for Malays and not for non-Malays, in effect tended
to accentuate demand for the Malay-preferred humanistic subjects.

Such measures worked

to shift the composition of the (upper) secondary school enrolment proportionally away fromtechnical, scientific, and vocational education, contrary to the intentions of the 1965 reform.
41) Third Malaysia Plan, Table 22-8. Some 2/3 of Chinese degree students were enrolled in science andapplied science disciplines in 1975, compared to 27% of Malays.
46

Table 8

Peninsular Malaysian Post-Primary Enrolment Trends and Ratios

1955
No.

1960
Ratio %

No.

1965
Ratio %

No.

a::

1973
Ratio %

No.

Ratio %

:::0

c::
t::i
z
t<l

;<l

Secondary Level
Total Secondarytrl

30,7007

169,200

15

358,244- Lower Secondary25

na469,17680

354,482- Upper Secondary0.

593,111

115,2891.

100 (est)

500

855

2,225

tJ
~

1

\

- Vocational Schools

5,000 (est)

?

(1)

I

- Technical Institutes

~

(")

e0'

25

0'
:3

'0
(1)

7,900

8,400

6,448 r

a

1,900

3,507

13,872)5-~-Sixth Formn::r

Tertiary Level

~

"'

aq

Teacher Training

1,000 (est)

6,870

9,114

4,600

(1)

6.3
College and Institutes
Universities

200 (est)

500 (est)

1,000 (est)

10,480654

2,835

12,921

na: not available
Sources: Progress of Education in the Asia Region; Educational Sta#stics of Malaysia 1938-1968; Education in Malaysia 1974.

~

-.:I

5'

a::

Eo

1.1

~
CJl

P;'

Moreover, sub-professional tertiary training was given a strongly Malay bias in enrolment
capabilities, limiting non-Malay access to, and therefore the manpower reservoir of, certain
skilled occupations.
This effect was also felt at the tertiary level, in the general universities. There, the proportion of student population in the liberal arts actually increased during the decade since 1965,
and the proportion of graduates even more so, to more than half 42 ) (Table 9).

It is noteworthy

that the balance would have been skewed in the other direction except for the concentration of
Universiti Kebangsaan's mainly Malay enrolment in the humanities and, to a lesser extent,
economics faculties.

Indeed, it was symptomatic of ethnic educational propensities that

Malays also predominated in the arts enrolment of the University of Malaya, while the composition of the scientific and technological faculties was overwhelmingly non-Malay, especially Chinese.

If the newer technological universities and institues are taken into account, theenrolment distribution emerged less emphatically liberal arts, though it was precisely these
institutions that suffered from laggard science enrolments at the upper-secondary level.
Policy and institutional constraints begot a situation of qualified but unsatisfied excess demandfor higher levels of education, only part of which found expression in the outflow of students
to universities abroad, amounting to more than double the domestic unversity population. 43 )The availability of educational facilities remains imbalanced between urban and rural
areas, notwithstanding the great strides taken since independence.

Primary education has

been made widely available in the kampongs (villages), to be sure, though there exists some
Table 9Proportions of Tertiary Level Enrolments and Graduates in Liberal Arts

General Universities University of Malaya(l)

1965

1975

Enrolments Graduates*

Enrolments Graduates*

52.8

48.6

49.8

46.3

Universiti Ketangsaan Malaysia(2)

81. 5

84.7

Universiti Sains Malaysia(3)

42.8

63.2

Subtota
All University Level Institutions

(%)

52.8

48.6

53.8

54.4

41. 5

38.1

36.5

48.5

(1) Faculties of Arts, and Economics and Administration.
(2) Faculties of Arts, Islamic Studies, Malay Literature and Culture, and Economics and Management.
(3) School of Humanities, Comparative Social Sciences, Humanities with Education.

* First degree level
Source: RIHED NET¥S, November 1974

42) Note that the Karachi Plan had called for a 45 : 55 balance between arts and other subjects, andthe science and technologies, by 1975.
43) While the Second Malaysia Plan forecast an enrolment of 12,800 in the technical and vocational
streams by 1975, actual enrolments lagged a third behind this target.
48

M. RUDNER: Education, Development and Change in Malaysia

Table 10Urban-Rural Distribution of Educational Facilities, 1975
Urban

Rural

770

3553

Number of schools
primary
lower-secondary

68

169

combined lower-upper secondary

317

256

primary

9707

22170

secondary

7236

5931

1316

865

N umber of classrooms

Number of laboratories(secondary level)

Source: Bulletin oj the UNESCO Regional Office jor Education in Asia, June 1976.

discrepancy between more-developed and less-developed regions.

However, the distributionof secondary-level facilities has been rather less favourable (Table 10).

By the mid-1970s

rural areas had five times the number of primary schools, and more than twice the classrooms,
taking into account lower population concentration, but far fewer secondary schools, andclassrooms, than the urban areas.

In the crucial areas of science education, rural secondary

schools have disproportionately fewer laboratory facilities than their urban counterparts.
Although residential secondaries and Special Science secondaries were established in eachState in Peninsular Malaysia, except Perak and Malacca, in order to improve the availabilityof science and technical schooling for rural Malays, the prevailing imbalances militatedagainst any substantial rise in transition and science-technical ratios.

Educational patterns

are still effectively dffierentiated as between urban and rural schooling, with the latter suffering
sharper cut-offs between the primary and secondary levels, and having a more pronounced
bias away from science training.

Because of the linguistic-ethnic interweaving particular to

Malaysia, these imbalances especially affected the Malay-medium stream.

Consequently,

Malay enrolments have been heavily concentrated in the non-science/non-technical courses,
in effect continuing at the post-primary level the old educational-occupational separation bylanguage and race.
The shape of Malaysia's 'education pyramid' depicts the narrowing effect of confinedtransition and enrolment ratios at higher rungs of education system (Table 11). Broadly
based at the primary level, the 'pyramid' tapered sharply at the secondary level and beyond,coming to a very narrow tertiary-level peak. To be sure, the introduction of open-admission'comprehensive' schooling in 1965 tended to broaden the lower-secondary range somewhat,
but a tight bottleneck occurred nevertheless at the upper levels.

The skew of the 'pyramid'

indicated a small proportion of Malaysian enrolments at the tertiary level, relative to thecountry's socio-economic development, or compared to others in the Asian region or Latin
America.

With the distribution of educational opportunity so confined, the selector mecha-

nisms invariably involved a large element of pre-selection along class and racial lines, in49

Table 11

Percentage Distribution of Enrolments at All Levels, Malaysia
and Selected Other Countries

Year

All
Levels

1st
Level

2nd
Level
Lower Upper

3rd
Level

Malaysia

1965

100

78.1

21. 2

0.7

(23.3+6.5)

1.0

Malaysia

1975

100

68

Asian Region

1965

100

75

22

3

Philippines

1964

100

79.4

14.8

5.8

Republic of Korea

1965

100

78.6

19.1

2.3

Singapore

1965

100

74.0

23.6

2.4

22.1

2.8

Taiwan

1965

100

75.1

Latin America

1965

100

82

16

2

Europe

1965

100

64

32

4

North America

1965

100

64

26

10

Sources: For Malaysia: Educational Statistics of fifalaysia 1938 to 1969; Education in Malaysia 1974;
or Progress of Education in the Asian Region; Third llIalaysia Plan.

curious combinations.

Differential policy treatment of Malays and non-Malays made for areportedly significant degree of upward mobility of Malays from lower class backgrounds tohigher levels of the education system; while, conversely, for non-Malays this distributive
mechanism for educational advancement tended to reflect and reinforce existing patterns ofsocial stratification. 44)
This distribution of enrolment among the various levels of schooling implied an allocationof education capital formation as between 'broader' and 'deeper' education/manpower relationships.

Increased enrolments over time raised the quantum of schooling per Malaysian worker

from an average of less than four years in 1950, to over five by 1965. 45 )Education capitalformation had broadened, as the growing labour force was schooled to the primary level, andafter 1965 increasingly to the 'comprehensive' lower-secondary level.

Yet, the sharply skewed'education pyramid', with its stunted progressivity at its post-primary (after 1965, post-lower
secondary) levels, militated against any parallel deepening of the educational attainments ofTable 12

Average Labour Force Educational Attainments for Selected Countries(years of schooling per worker)

Malaysia (1965): 5.10

Indonesia (1965): 3.28

Japan

(1960): 10.3

Philippines (1965): 7.37

U.K.

(1960): 10.2

Singapore (1965): 6.12

U.S.A.

(1960): 11.8

Taiwan (1965): 5.71
Source: Sundrum, Manpower and Educational Development in Eastern and Southern Asia.
44) Y oshimitsu Takei, John C. Bock, Bruce Saunders, Educational Sponsorship by Ethnicity: A Preliminary
Analysis of the West lIfalaysian Experience (Athens, Ohio, 1973).
45) R. M. Sundrum, 'Manpower and Educational Development in Eastern and Southern Asia; fifalayan
Economic Review (1971).

50

M. RUDNER: Education, Development and Change in Malaysia

the labour force at large.

Ordinary selectivity was furthermore confining as a result of im-

plicit and explicit linguistic and racial barriers to educational advancement.

The average

educational attainment of the Malaysian labour force may have compared favourably to thatof less-developed neighbours, but still ranked well beneath the needs of economic development (Table 12).46)

IV Education and National Development: Some Topics for Consideration
Education systems function to define, transmit, and thereby allocate values in society.
This ultimately allocative role serves to make certain scarce valued resources available to some,while denying them to others.

Thus, institutional limits on the scope of participation in edu-

cation, and the selection mechanisms for advancement through the system, operate to regulate
access to social status and roles.

Again, the prescribed content of education designates what

attitudes, beliefs, expectations, information and skills are imparted through the agency offormal schooling.

In Malaysia, the once oversized private and parochial school sector has

since been supplanted by a national education institution, in which the allocative choices arematters of public policy.

Thus, education policy has become more all-embracing and uni-

form throughout, but also more singularly authoritative.

Some of the consequences for

Malaysian economic, social, and political development are considered below.

a.

Education and the Labour Market: Employment
The Malaysian labour market has long been characterized by the paradox of relatively

high levels of 'hard core' unemployment coincidental with shortages of manpower, atdiffering levels of skills and educational attainment.

A 1962 survey of the labour force

disclosed unemployment rates of 5.2 per cent among males, and 7.9 per cent amongfemales. 47 )For both males and females, the highest rates of unemployment were incurredby those with incomplete secondary level education of the undifferentiated, grammer school
type, followed by those with just a primary education (Table 13).

By contrast, graduatesof technical, vocational or professional streams suffered little or no unemployment, withmayn vacancies actually being left unfilled.
This relationship between education-or the lack of it-and unemployment has persisted
following the 1965 reform introducing open-access 'comprehensive' lower secondary schooling.
Between 1970 and 1975 the rate of unemployment oscillated between seven and eight per centof the labour force.

As in the past, the highest incidence of unemployment affected youth

with low and non-differentiated educational attainments. Some 69 per cent of registered
unemployed (those for whom data is available) in 1975 were aged between 15-24 years, andabout 83 per cent had lower-secondary education or less. 48 ) Unemployment of those having
reached the upper-secondary level continued to be most pronounced among the arts stream.
46) Third Malaysia Plan, Chap. 8.
47) Reports on Employment, Unemployment and Under-employment, 1962, Department of Labour andIndustrial Relations and Department of Statistics, Kuala Lumpur, 1962.
48) The Treasury, Malaysia. Economic Report 1975-76 (Kuala Lumpur, 1976), p. 90, Third Malaysia
Plan, Chap. 8.

51

Table 13

Specific Unemployment Rates by Level of Education, 1962
Percentage unemployed

No education
Primary level
Secondary level, forms I and II
form III
form IV
form V
form VI
Trade schools or technical institute
Teacher training college
Technical college or polytechnic
University
all
Note:

Males

Females

3. 1
5.3
9.4
10.9
12.1
6.7
9.5
0.2
0.0
0.01
0.04
5. 2

4.3
12.8
31. 7
29.3
22.8
10.2
21. 9
0.3
0.0
0.07
7.9

UiUi
Specific unemployment rate=Ui+Ei where Vi is the number unemployed

and Ei the number gainfully employed at each educational level.
Source: 'Report on Employment, Unemployment and Under-employment, 1962',
Department of Labour and Industrial Relations and Department of Statistics,
Kuala Lumpur, reproduced in Report of the Higher Education Planning
Committee} 1967.

At the same time, education policy, with its selectivity and sharp cut-off at higher andmore specialized levels, has not met the growing demand for executive, professional andtechnical manpower.

In order to overcome constraints on development due to the lack ofqualified manpower, Malaysia has continued to rely on the employment of expatriate personnel.

Data for the mid-1960s indicate thet expatriates filled a fifth of all high-echelon pro-fessional and technical postions, and were particularly strongly represented in the private
sector.

Meanwhile, a large proportion of professional and sub-professional posts, especiallyin the public sectors, remained vacant (Table 14).49)
into the 1970s. 50 )This pattern of employment persisted

Dependence on expatriate personnel for managerial and technical man-power tended to favour private enterprise and weaken public service recruitment, especiallysince the end of colonial service.

Moreover, the extent of the expatriate stake in top-ranking

occupations carried certain negative implications for the management of the Malaysian economy, more about which below.
Shortages of qualified manpower affected not only the professional and sub-professionalranks, but also the skilled and semi-skilled occupations requiring some level of post-primary49) See also Sundrum, Educational Planning, pp. 41-3.
50) The results of the 1973 Manpower Survey reproduced in the Third ll:falaysia Plan, table 8: 11. Then,
vacancies were reported for some 10.4% of Professional and technical posts, 8.6% of administrative andmanagerial posts, 7.1% of clerical, 6.3% of service, 1.7% of sales, 4.4% of production, 3.1% of agricultural
posts.

52

M. RUDNER: Education, Development and Change in Malaysia

Table 14 Vacant and Expatriate-filled Positions, 1965
(Percentages of total posts)
Government
Sectors

All occupations

Education
SystemPrivate Sector

Total

V
(1)

E-F

V

V

V

(3)

E-F
(4)

E-F

(2)

(5)

(6)

(7)

E-F
(8)

6.4

0.2

7.7

2.8#

0.4

0.6

2.5

1.3

27.1

3.3

0.9

28.8

6. 1

20.1

4.2

43.6

12.9

21. 3

24.3

17.0

24.3

17.0

22.2

4.4

24.4

12.0

10.3

1.3

15.3

5.8

5.8

13.4

7.6

3.2

12.1

15.2

2.1

Professional lManagers

17.1

3.0

Technologists

20.7

8.0

Teachers
Others

16.0

4.6

33.3

11. 7

O. 1

9.0

1.7

Sub- professional 2
Junior managers/accounts
Teachers

13.4*

7.6

18.3

12.3

0.4

Bluecollar

6.2

15.2

0.8

2.3

Whitecollar

6. 7

14.7

0.5

3.4

Bluecollar

2.8

13.7

0.3

0.9

Whitecollar

7.0

18.2

0.27

4.4

Technologists and others
Skilled labour 3
Teachers

2.2*

2. 2

Semi skilled/unskilled* Arbitrary division.
# Including posts filled by local but unqualified personnel (allocative only).
1 University or equivalent experience for managers.
2 Training of one or two years beyond School Certificate.
3 Education beyond Lower Certificate of Education Level, but less than subprofessional.
V: Vacant; E-F: Expatriate-filled.

training (e.g. beyond the Lower Certificate of Education).

Access to their occupations was

restricted by the racial and linguistic selectivity of post-secondary institutions.

Insufficient

supplies of appropriately educated and trained labour became a significant limiting factor in
Malaysian economic activity.

Successive development plans have blamed inadequacies ofhuman capital, more than of capital funding for persistent shortfalls in plan implementation. 51 )Responsibility for the apparent discontinuity between schooling and employment opportunities may be traced in to the survival of the 'grammar' cult in the new context of racial
restructuring. The strong hand of the past in matters of educational content and selectivity
rendered the institution of education rather less responsive to changing circumstances thanwarranted by the evolution of government policy towards education.

Explicit and implicit

racial and linguistic tests further confirmed the social scope of educational continuation.
Thus, Malaysia's sharply cut-off 'educational pyramid' produced too many school leavers
with inappropriate training, and too few with sufficient education relative to social and market
51) Third Malaysia Plan, Chap. 8-vii.

53

demands .

. b.

Education and the Labour Market: Insularity
Ethnic insularity in the labour market, characteristic of plural societies and tradition-boundeconomic expectations, has been a major impediment to manpower mobility and the reductionof inequalities in (Peninsular) Malaysia.

Historically, colonial education policy contributed

to and reinforced ethnic-linguistic occupational separation.

Malay-language education had a"strong rural bias ... adapted to the needs of the home(i.e. Kampongvillage)environment."52) Tamil schools on rural estates were similarly confining, and Chinese education--the only vernaculars tream then extending beyond the primary level-preserved an essentially parochial purpose.
From 1957, the adoption of the national education policy, built around a common curiculum, overrode schooled insularity in favour of modernizing expectations.

A last attempt by

the independent Malayan government to uphold the traditional occupational orientation of atleast a segment of the Malay stream, through the establishment of 'rural trade' schools geared
to the Kampong economy, failed to gain popularity and was finally abandoned in 1964.
Since then, Malaysian education has evinced a generalist and modernist occupational outlook
for all language streams.
The metamorphose was most pronounced in Malay-language education.

In the past,

only English schooling provided generalized access to higher echelon occupations, leading
many avenue for Malay upward mobility was for 'Intelligent' pupils to transfer out of
the Malay stream to the English.

During the first decade of independence, English edu-

cation still provided the widest latitude for occupational mobility, even though the policy
reforms had rectified somewhat the educational insularity of the hitherto confining vernacularstreams.

In particular, the extension of Malay-language schooling through the post-primarylevels, coupled to policies of ethnic sponsorship for Malays, brought about a radical transformation of Malay educational ambitions and social aims.
Upward mobility through the education system, and thereafter into occupational roles,
by the late 1960s was more conspicuous for Malays than for non-Malays. 53)

By the middle

1970s Malays comprised more than half of post-primary enrolment, and had already increased
their share to over 45 per cent of professional, technical, managerial and administrative employment. 54 )While this process was doubtlessly abetted by discriminatory preferences,

policy expressions of Malay 'special rights', the operational key was to be found in the transformation of Malay-medium education.

At the post-primary levels, this Malay educationaltransformation produced a new technocratic class, of mainly peasant background, schooled in52) fBRD Report, p. 449.
53) Takei and Bock, Ethnic Sponsorship in Education, pp. 8, 11, 12. This study, conducted in 1968-69,
reports that almost 60 per cent of Malays in secondary schools are of lower/lower-medium socio-economic
origins, and enjoy greater upward mobility through the school system than do non-Malays. At theuniversity level they found that 40 per cent of Malay students come from lower economic strata, compared
to a negligible number of non-Malays (p. 11). See also the Third Malaysia Plan Statistics on Racial
Enrolment at the Tertiary Level, Table 22-6.
54) Third Malaysia Plan, Table 4-15, and para 433.

54

M. RUDNER: Education, Development and Change in Malaysia

modern skiils and values, and constituting a 'second generation' nationalist elite.

Even atthe mass primary level, the modernization of Malay education doubtlessly contributed to theimproved employment rates for Malays, in the face of deteriorating unemployment generally.55)
The gradual converSIOn of English schools will eventually eliminate all institutional
competition to the post-primary mobility and occupational utility of Malay-language education.

On the other hand, the Chinese and especially the Tamil streams, being terminal at the

primary level, offer rather less scope for upward or occupational mobility.
Ethnic occupational insularity, together with attendant inequalities of income distribution, have remained features of the Malaysian labour market.

Of course schools werehardly to blame for these differentials, which had their origins in history and were perpetuatedthrough class and communal relationships. However, education has served to transmit existing occupational bias, or else not correct it.

Within the Malay stream, their generally inade-quate facilities for science and technical instruction has resulted in a de facto concentration on
grammar-style, literary education.

Malay occupational predilections have accordingly been

towards administration and pedagogy, leaving the scientific and technological professions
very much to English-educated non-Malays, particularly Chinese. 56)

This racial channelling

declined somewhat during the 1970s, but is still pronounced. Although deliberate discrimination among schools is no longer practiced, the inevitable leads and lags in policy innovation
has meant that certain segments of the school system benefited sooner, or more, from development than others.

Overall improvements notwithstanding, rural schools are generally in-ferior to urban, Tamil-language schooling has remained problematic, certain neighbourhood
schools have been better equipped than others, while reputedly 'elite' institutions continue toexercise undue claims on public educational resources.
Modernity and uniformity in education have not wrought full equality of opportunity
among the different communities.

In Malaysia like in India and elsewhere in Southern

Asia, linguistic constraints on occupational mobility, arising out of particular educational
styles or differences in the economic utility of languages, accentuate anew the insularity ofgains wrought by discontinuous educational development. 57)

c.

Education and Management of the Economy
The social composition of control over national economic affairs depends largely upon the

manpower output of education systems.

During the colonial period, top echelon administra-55) The Labour Force Sample Survey, 1972, indicated that Malay unemployment had tended to improve(1971 figures in brackets) to six per cent (7.8 per cent) while the Chinese remained steady at seven per cent(7.1 per cent) and the Indian worsened to 12.2 per cent (11.1 per cent). This confirmed trends reported
in the Socio-Economic Survey of Households, 1967-68, showing that between 1962 and 1968 Malay
unemployment fell from 6.1 per cent to 5.8 per cent, whereas for Chinese and Indians it rose from six per
cent to 6.9 per cent and 10.3 per cent, respectively.
56) IAU/UNESCO, Higher Education and De'llelopment t'n Southeast Asia, Vol. II, (Paris, 1969), pp. 366-7.
57) G. Myrdal, Asian Drama, Vol. III, pp. 1741-3.

55

tive, managerial, professional and technical posts were mostly filled by expatriate British personnel. At the outset of independence, only about a quarter of Division 1 positions in the Federal public service was filled by Malayans (1955).58)

Measures aimed at rectifying this situation

and bringing the understaffed government bureaucracy up to full establishment strength hinged upon the supply of qualified, highlevel manpower.

Whereas 'Malayanization' had beenscheduled to proceed at a gradual pace ater independence, in the event the public service endured rapid expatriate retirements, spurred by the terms of compensation, far in excess of thecapacity of the education system to produce local replacements. 59)

The resulting strain ofunderstaffing hit government bu reaucracy at precisely the time when political developments
were generating increasingly urgent economic and social demands on public administration.
Remedy was sought in the expansion of civil service recruitment through the growth ofeducation.

Following independence Malay-educated personnel were accepted for senior

posts, hitherto exclusively Engish, and came to occupy an increasingly dominant position ingovernment bureaucracy.

This not only altered the language of administration but, evenmore significantly, its social composition and politicalcultural outlook.
Despite the pressures of development, public service recruitment has remained ethnicallyand educationally restrictive.

Senior administrative positions have not been open to non-

Malays except on the basis of a 1 : 4 (non-Malay: Malay) quota, originating from the early
1950s, although the technical and professional branches are necessarliy more open. 60 )Theeffect of restrictive recruitment has been to limit the expansion of the government service tothe output of higher educated Malays.

Consequently, understaffing at the senior admini-

strative and professional and technical ranks incurred opportunity costs in terms of potential
development forgone.
Economic developments during the 1960s and early 1970s led to a dramatic expansion ofboth the private corporate sector and state commercial enterprise. 61)

The accompanying

growth in demand for business administration and technical-professional personnel could not
be met by the Malaysian education system, with its literary bias and sharp cut-off points.
Most locally-recruited corporate personnel tended to be non-Malay, particularly Chinese,
since Malays gerneally preferred and were given preference in government administrative
service.

The remaining shortages were made up by the large-scale employment of expatri-

ates in top-echelon managerial and professional-technical posts Cfable 13).
One adverse consequence of this has been the formation within the economic administration (private as well as public) of separate occupational communities of expatriates, nonMalays, and Malays, set apart by educational experience, social attachments, value orien58) High Commissioner, L.C. Proc. 30 November 1955. A further 13 per cent of Division 1 post were unfilled.
59) Cf. Report of a Committee on the Malayanization of the Public Service (Kuala Lumpur, 1956); R. 0.
Tilman, Bureaucratic Transition in j7falaya (Durham, NC, 1961).
60) The Colonial Territories 1953-54 (HMSO, London, 1954), Cmd. 9169, para 111.
61) Third.Malaysia Plan, para 424.
56

M. RUDNER: Education, Development and Change in Malaysia

tations and organizational commitments.

Differences among occupational communities at

economic decision-making levels have occasionally given rise to goal conflicts which interfered with the effective administration of development policy.62)

The dilution of national

political control over economic management tended to inhibit policy initiative and innovation,
especially where established procedures, norms or interests were at stake.

Indeed, this tenden-

cy for breakdown and discontinuity in development administration was tacitly abetted by thepolitical leaderships customary aversion to organizational discord.

Structural deficiencies

tended to be tolerated and often perpetuated, therefore aggravating their negative influenceon administrative efficiency. 63)
Tensions in economic administration touched on the raw communal nerves of the
Malaysian body politic.

Growing impatience with laggard developmental performance en-gendered a more radical nationalism especially among the emergent, Malay-educated, secondgeneration elite, reacting against the composition and frustrations of economic management.
Yet, the tenor of Malay ultra-nationalist argumentation revealed a barely-disguised racialism
and xenophobia injected into political debate under radical guise. 64 )Advocacy of a racial

redistribution of income and wealth obtained official respectability through the adoption of a
'racial economic balance' as the ultimate target of public policy as from the Second Malaysia
Plan. 65 ) However, the pursuit of Malay economic power, by way of 'restructuring society andits economic balance', placed in jeopardy the delicately contrived balance of inter-communal
support for the Alliance political formula, without really treating the root issue, i.e. the apparent failure of education policy to generate sufficient high-level human capital to extend thescope of Malayanization towards greater charge of, and a larger share in, the expanding corporate economy.

d.

Education and Acculturalisation, Socialisation and Social Brokerage
As the most salient public institution touching all communities, English-language educa-

tion, historically served as an agency for the creation of social brokers to mediate inter-communal relations in Malaya's plural society. While the vernacular streams appealed to their respective communities only, English education was uniquely multi-racial in its enrolment, and remained singularly well positioned by its post-primary structure for colonial elite formation. English language grammar-type education became the accepted preparation for social recruitment
to leadership roles in public administration and corporate enterprise during the colonial period,62) On this point, and for examples, see Gayl D. Ness, 'The Malayan Bureaucracy and its Occupational
Communities', Comparatz've Studz'es in Soc£e~y and ENstory (April, 1970), esp, p, 183; and Martin Rudner,
NationaHsm, Plannz'ng and Economic Moderniza#on in 111alaysia, The PoHtics of Beginning Development.
63) cf. Milton J. Esman, Development and Administration in Jl1alaysia. (Cornell, 1972).
64) Probably the most well-known published work in this line is Mahathir bin Mohammed, The Malay
Dilemma (Singapore, 1970). The book has been banned in Malaysia notwithstanding Dr. Mahathir's
recent (1976) appointment as Minister of Education and Deputy Prime Minister.
65) Second 111alaysia Plan, para 20.

57and for some time afterwards. 66)

What emerged was a bi-cultural elite, composed of person-ages representing the various communities but socialised according to the share values ofEnglish grammar schooling.

The education process was emphatically elitist in the double

sence that leadership recruitment through English acculturalisation and socialisation patterns
was very largely confined to communal elites, and made for the management of underlying
social tensions through elite-level social brokerage.
The first generation Alliance party leadership exemplified this consociational type ofinter-communal elite, highly stratified by communal social background and related by thecommon cultural denominator of English grammar education.

Under their influence social

brokerage crystallized into a distinctive Alliance style of political compromise.

The efficacyof this form of political enterpreneurship required ongoing cohesiveness and exclusivity for thecommon mode of socialisation and acculturalisation.

Otherwise, non-shared avenues of

elite formation might emerge to challenge or else shatter the bonds among brokers and between elite patrons and communal clients.
The education policy reforms of 1957 and 1961, widely regarded as a tribute to the Alliance manner of social brokerage, ironically carried the seeds of its eventual challenge.

The

provision of a national standard of primary schooling in the Malay, Chinese and Tamil languages, and the extension of Malay-medium education through the secondary level, and laterto the tertiary as well, effectively pluralized the former English-stream monopoly over educational acculturalisation and socialisation for economic and political leadership roles.

The

shared English educational experience diminished relative to the considerable expansion ofenrolments in separate National and National-type schools during the 1960s.

Except for theprovision of a common curriculum, this trend towards the vernacular decreased the commonality of education and generated competing communal ('ultra') elites.

Moreover, there e-

merged a deepening dichotomy between the ethnic mass, educated increasingly in their respective vernacular primary streams, and the established English-educated consociational
elites still dominating the component parties of the ruling Alliance.

An envigorated ethnicity,

now inspired by vernacular educated, modernised communal counter-elites, appeared lessamenable to accommodation by traditional patrimonial style of social brokerage.
Dissension within the Alliance coalition weakened its political capabilities at a time of
growing stress and strain on political integration.

Its two main constituent party organi-zations, the United Malays National Organization (UMNO) and Malayan Chinese Association (MCA) came under increasing assault from their respective communal counter-elites
during the 1960s.

Alliance appeal constricted accordingly, costing the coalition a margin of

support in the 1969 general elections.

The voting result projected a rise of ethnic parochi-

alism, which challenged the terms of inter-communal accommondation fostered by the Al66) On the social and educational backgrounds of the early Alliance nationalistic leadership, see R. O. Tilman,'Policy Formulation, Policy Execution, and the Political Elite Structure of Contemporary Malaya', inWang Gungwu, ed., Malaysia (New York, 1965).

58

M. RUDNER: Education, Development and Change in Malaysia

liance leadership consensus.

A sudden breakdown in the Alliance leadership competence

contributed to the aftermath of racial violence.
The political reconstruction that followed the 1969 crisis and emergency aimed at restoring the modicum of inter-communal co-operation and accommodation necessary for the functioning of a more-or-Iess 'open', plural society.

The policies effected emphasised a double

blend of norms and patterns of social brokerage.

On the normative level, Malays were assur-

ed of their national title and non-Malays of their legitimate interests, an authoritative allocation of national rights to Malays and civil rights to non-Malays that became legally sacrosanct.

The long-run task of creating a new set of social brokers to reconcile ethnic interests

in terms of these norms fell to Malay-language education.

To be sure, education policy

continued to tolerate Chinese and Tamil language National-type primary schools, to avoid
antagonising these communities.

However the English stream is to be eliminatied grade by

grade up to 1983, leaving a Malay language monopoly over post-primary education.

With

Malay to become the exclusive mediator of shared acculturalisation and recruitment to leadership roles, it was calculated that this would engender a multi-racial, Malay-educated elite
better disposed to social brokerage among their respective ethnic interests, while rendering
the terms of racial consociation more emphatically Malay.
Existing education policies and practice have not been wholly consistent with these new
directions in elite formation and political entrepreneurship.

Ongoing restrictions on entry

to the upper secondary levels amount a deliberate constriction of the scope of shared educational enculturation.

Malaysia's sharply skewed 'education pyramid', in which only the post-

primary levels were racially and educationally integrated, offers only a narrow platform for theintended creation of social brokers.

The restricted effective level of national educationalsocialisation is narrowed still further by the degree of cultural alienation between prospective
social brokers and their communal reference groups, where primary school enrolment islargely-about a third-in educationally-segregated Chinese and Tamil streams. Even within
the Malay-language stream now being transformed along racially integrated lines, thepersistence of differential continuation patterns for Malays and non-Malays might tend toprejudice the emergence of a new consociational elite.

Discordant lines of acculturalisationand socialisation accompanying education policy may bring about a situation where the passing of traditional patrimonial social brokerage entails in its wake ethnocentered class confrontation.

e.

The Search for National Symbols of Political Community
The political development of Malaysia points to the distinction between state-building

and nation-building.

Modern state institutions have been established and extended to copewith the demands of development.

On the other hand, integrative, normative symbols
59

of nationhood have remained relatively underdeveloped and weak. 67)

Building a modern

state apparatus where any prior sense of nation-being was absent required the formulation,
virtually de novo, of a cultural matrix for binding a plural society into a political communityand legitimizing its authority stucture.
Formal enculturation in British Malaya had been left largely to educational institutions,with their diverse orientations.

While independent Malaysia retained and even accentuatedthe acculturalising role of education, stricter political direction was applied to the determination and transmission of social values through the school system.

In taking on this politicalimperative, policies towards educational acculturalisation had to contend with the competingand oftentimes contradictory requirements of authority, as distinct from social acceptability;
normative orthodoxy or tolerance; consistency or flexibility in application.
For much of Malaysia's modern history the dilemma was tacitly resolved by avoiding any
positive definition of authoritative national values, and substituting instead the manipulationof surrogate symbols or, more emphatically, negative anti-symbols.

Colonial education

policy during the early 1950s promulgated the fostering of a 'United Malayan Nation' as its
political cultural goal, though without specifying the meaning of 'Malayan', or 'nation', or,indeed, the notion of 'unity'.68)

The vagueness of the concept relegated it to the sphere ofplatitudes, while in practice the colonial administration treated educational acculturation
primarly as a problem of Chinese orientations.

As in other times and places, wheneverpolitical forces arose that could not be contained by established institutions, or controlled bysettled customs, authority variously ascribed them to the intrigues of hostile strangers.
Recurrent efforts on the part of the colonial Education Department to convert Chinese
education to the English medium ('National' schools of 1952; 'Standard-type' schools of 1954)
elevated the educational language question to a test of loyalty.

English language education

became a symbol of orthodoxy, whereas linguistic pluralism, especially Chinese, was tainted
with the anti-symbol of Communist sedition.

Official sponsorship of English instruction andcurriculum substituted for any formulation of genuine national focal points of Malayan allegiance.

Instead, the emphasis on English educational symbols produced hostile reactions

among Malay nationalists as well as Chinese, and plunged political culture into the maelstromof language politics.
Malaya's newly-elected Alliance government assumed power in 1955 confident in its
67) The political cultural dimensions of political systems, and their development, has not been fully examinedin the political science literature. Yet it is clear that there exists a critical symbiotic relationship between
the authoritative network of norms and the performance of state institutions in the political system; d.
G. Almond and S. Verba, The Civic Culture (Princeton, 1963); L. W. Pye and S. Verba, eds., Political
Culture and Political Development (Princeton, 1965), David Easton, A Systems Analysis of Polt'tical
Ltje (New York, 1965); Carl J. Friedrich, Man and His CO'lJernment (New York, 1965).
68) Report of the Education Policy Committee, Legislative Council Paper 70 of 1952, para 7. The term
originated in the Report of the Barnes Committee on Malay education,. and was subsequently adopted
without further elucidation in the 1952 Education Ordinance.

60M. RUDNER: Education, Development and Change in Malaysia

political authority, having derived its legitimacy from a popular mandate coupled with British~style constitutional association with traditional Malay monarchical forms.

Yet the Alliancepolitical formula preferred to avoid potentially divisive normative issues, relying instead on a
pragmatic style of social brokerage to advance the cause of an emergent consociational democracy.

That marked the treatment of education policy adopted by the Razak Committee.

Its resolution of the contentious language issue balanced educational acculturalisation on thetwin priciples of national identity and inter-communal acceptability.

These points of re-

ference for policy indicated little about the actual normative content of educational acculturalisation. Rather, the acceptance of compromise was itself conceived as producing, overtime, definite commitments to political community. Form served as a substitute for substance in the Alliance approach to national-building.
Meanwhile, in view of their own caution and ambiguity over the determination of positive
national norms, the Alliance leadership continued to manipulate the double anti-symbols ofcommunism and racialism so as to demarcate boundaries oflegitimacy.
An educational curricuhun oriented towards Malaya, and not towards other countries,
may well have been a sine qua non of national education enculturation, but itself hardly
sufficed to foster national identity.

As a matter of fact, the continued predominance ofessentially ethnic values in society was accentuated, rather than being sublimated, by themodern form of mass public education and the creation of new parochial elites. 69 )The

Alliance formula came under mounting attack from Malay "ultra" insistence on fundamentally Malay national norms on the one hand, and non-Malay "chauvinist" demands
for recognition of normative pluralism on the other. 70)

Reacting to the situation, govern-

ment's education policy review, expressed in the Rahman Talib Committee Report, resurrected the national language symbol in educational acculturalisation.

Thereafter for muchof the 1960s, language politics dominated the issue of political culture. 71)

Carried forward

by its own momentum, the controversy over the language status of Malaysian political community flowed over into a dispute about political legitimacy.

When the explosion occurred

during the unsettled aftermath of the 1969 general elections, the original Alliance consensus
on political community and political legitimacy ranked among the first casualties.
The political reconstruction that followed laid down the norms for a reconstituted politicalculture, and codified these in the Rukunegara, Malaysia's so-called "National Ideology'. 72)
In reply to the challenge, official ideology projected distinctively Malay values onto the main
symbols of Malaysian politics: the Monarchy (Malay Rulers), the Established Religion69) cf. Walker Conner, National-building or Nation-destroying? World Polt'tz'cs (April, 1972), pp. 319-55.
70) d. Wang Gungwu, 'Malayan Nationalism' ,Journal of the Royal Central Asz'an Society (July-Oct.1962),
p. 321 and 'Chinese Politics in Malaya, The Chz'na Quarterly (1970), pp. 1-30, and R. O. Tilman, 'The
Socialization of the Chinese into Malaysian Politics'; Some Preliminary Observations', Studz'es on Asia
(1966),71) Margaret Roff, 'The Politics of Language in Malaya', Asz'an Survey (May, 1967).
72) See R. S. Milne, 'National Ideology and Nation-building in Malaysia', Asz'an Survey (July, 1970).
61

(Islam), the National Language (Malay) and communal status (Malay 'special rights').
While the 'legitimate rights' of non-Malays were assured as hitherto, the more positivist
definition of Malaysian political culture affirmed Malay custody over the norms of politicalcommunity and political legitimacy.

This invoked a subtle but nevertheless meaningfulchange in the terms of intercommunal partnership, in so far as non-Malays were now expected
to subscribe to strictly Malay symbols of national identity.

The inculcation of Malay national

norms postulated a stronger emphasis on political acculturalisation by means of education
policy.

Conversion of post-primary schooling to the Malay language, exclusively, implies

a greater degree of cultural integration eventually.

However, language is now just one, albeit

salient, symbol of the Malay nationalist resurgence.

Political means of acculturation will

have to cope with the dilemma involved in forging particularistic norms into the nationalismof an otherwise plural society.

In the meantime, UMNO has proceeded to extend its bloc ofpolitical consensus beyond the original Alliance to a broader National Front coalition, designed to make impregnable the Malay dominion over the Malaysian political process.
Any evaluation of the wider consequences of education policies must necessarily remaintentative, to be sure, owing to our inadequate time perspective.

It is still too soon to discern

the full influence of changes in Malaysian education since independence: the first cohort
to embark on post-1957 national schooling finished its primary education in 1963, completed
the secondary level not before 1970, and graduated university (bachelor's degree) only in 1973.
This lengthy time sequence, the gestation period of education, suggests that the outcome ofthe education institution-building process of the 1950s and 60s has yet to be wholly revealed.

62