page_title: Sarawak
section_title: Education
hierarchical_section_title: Sarawak / Infrastructure / Education
caption_attribution_description: English: User:TabdullaTabdulla 12:29, 13 January 2007 (UTC) Summary Tabdulla 12:29, 13 January 2007 (UTC)
context_page_description: Sarawak is a state of Malaysia. The largest among the 13 states, with an area almost equal to that of Peninsular Malaysia, Sarawak is located in northwest Borneo Island, and is bordered by the Malaysian state of Sabah to the northeast, Kalimantan to the south, and Brunei in the north. The capital city, Kuching, is the largest city in Sarawak, the economic centre of the state, and the seat of the Sarawak state government. Other cities and towns in Sarawak include Miri, Sibu, and Bintulu. As of the 2015 census, the population of Sarawak was 2,636,000. Sarawak has an equatorial climate with tropical rainforests and abundant animal and plant species. It has several prominent cave systems at Gunung Mulu National Park. Rajang River is the longest river in Malaysia; Bakun Dam, one of the largest dams in Southeast Asia, is located on one of its tributaries, the Balui River. Mount Murud is the highest point in Sarawak.
  The earliest known human settlement in Sarawak at the Niah Caves dates back 40,000 years. A series of Chinese ceramics dated from the 8th to 13th century AD was uncovered at the archaeological site of Santubong.
context_section_description: Education in Malaysia falls under the remit of two federal ministries; the Malaysian Ministry of Education is responsible for primary and secondary education, while the Ministry of Higher Education has oversight over public universities, polytechnic and community colleges. Early childhood education is not directly controlled by the Ministry of Education as it does with primary and secondary education. However, the ministry does oversee the licensing of private kindergartens, the main form of early childhood education, in accordance with the National Pre-School Quality Standard, which was launched in 2013.
  Around the time of Federation, overall literacy in Sarawak was quite low. In 1960, the overall literacy rate was 25%, with a heavy slant in the literacy rate towards the Chinese population, 53%, compared with that of indigenous peoples which was substantially lower, only 17%. By 2007, overall literacy in adults aged 15 and over had significantly increased to 92.3% and in 2012, this had climbed to 96%.
  There were 1480 schools in Sarawak in 2014, of which 1271 were primary, 202 were secondary and 7 were vocational/technical secondary schools. Among these are a number of schools that date from the Brooke era, including St. Thomas's School Kuching (1848), St Mary's School Kuching (1848), and St Joseph's School Kuching (1882). As well as government schools, there are four international schools: Tunku Putra School, a primary and secondary school offering national and Cambridge curricula, Lodge International School, which is also open to local students and uses both the British National and Cambridge systems, Kidurong International School, which is owned by Shell and offers primary education mainly to children of employees but local children may enter depending on space availability, and Tenby International School, which opened in 2014 and is open to both local and expatriate children. There are also 14 Chinese independent secondary schools in Sarawak that teach in Chinese rather than English or Malay. Previously, only Chinese students were enrolled in these schools, but mobility of the workforce has led to increasing turnover of students as parents move to other areas for employment. This has led to an increasing number of bumiputera students being enrolled in Chinese schools.
  Sarawak is home to three public universities – Universiti Malaysia Sarawak, Universiti Teknologi Mara at Kota Samarahan, and Universiti Putra Malaysia – as well as the private Curtin University, Malaysia and Swinburne University of Technology Sarawak Campus. The latter two are satellite campuses of Curtin University in Perth and Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne, Australia.
  With the establishment of SCORE and the associated potential of 1.6 million more jobs by 2030, the state government allocated RM1 billion from 2016 to 2020 to a Skills Development Fund for vocational education. In 2015, Petronas provided vocational scholarships to 150 underprivileged Sarawak students as part of its Vocational Institution Sponsorship and Training Assistance program, although it had been criticised for under-representing local students in its previous allocations; the company also provided support to other Sarawak vocational education centres.
caption: Universiti Malaysia Sarawak (UNIMAS) chancellory building
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