Inequality In Educational Opportunities

Introduction - Concept of Inequality in Educational Opportunities

Globally, the movement of civil rights has been transformed to the movement of human rights. Under the microscope of examining human rights, the term ‘equality of educational opportunity’ has been put under the spotlight as one of the key aspects to improve nation’s development. Bronfenbrenner (1973) proposed that educational equity can be defined as the fairness or social justice of the distribution of education. (as cited in Jacob and Holsinger, 2008) From this, inequality of educational opportunities could be defined as the unfairness of distribution of educational related resource. According to The Glossary of Educational Reform (2016), biased or unfair policies, programs,

Hence, language barrier of pupils with different cultural background has become one of the socio-cultural issues in inequality of educational opportunity. Undoubtedly, educating pupils is not a one-way flow of knowledge from a teacher to students but involves interactions between teachers and students in order to achieve specific learning objectives. Hence, it is essential for teacher to speak the language that can be comprehended by the pupils. However, the research, which conducted by Ramle Abdullah, Wan Hasmah, Amir Zal, & Asmawi Ibrahim (2013), has shown that the majority of teachers, who teach indigenous group, are unable to speak the mother tongue of the indigenous group such as Temiar language. In this case, pupils, who could not understand the medium of instruction used such as English or Malay, will not be included and engaged in the lesson. On that account, indigenous pupils could hardly understand the lesson delivered by the teacher as they did not understand the language used. As time goes by, indigenous pupils are lagged behind the progress and slowly being sidelined in the classroom. This condition has imprisoned the rights for indigenous pupils to learn in the classroom. In this case, the social stratification between indigenous group and other groups will not be narrowed yet it might become more severe as the education level of the young

By providing equal access to education for children regardless of their socio-economic background, social mobility of Malaysia citizens could be improved drastically. However, the opportunity provided for residents in rural area, who are mostly ranked at the lower level of social hierarchy, is insufficient from the aspects of teaching force available. According to Education Minister Malaysia, Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin, most rural schools nationwide have encountered the problem of lagged behind in facilities and teaching force. (as cited in Teh, 2014) From the data provided by Department of Statistics Malaysia (2012), the average monthly income for household in rural area is RM3,080.00 while the RM 5,742.00 for urban area. As a deduction, most of the pupils in rural area are from family with lower socioeconomic status compared to urban area. Therefore, the shortage of trained teacher in rural area is actually a kind of discrimination in education for pupils with low socioeconomic status. According to Craft (2012), the deficiency of qualified teachers in rural area has been an unresolved problem in Malaysia due to the reluctant of trained teachers to serve in remote areas. Moreover, teachers’ shortage has important consequences for the quality of education that pupils receive. Due to the shortage of teaching force in rural area,