MOE to reduce percentage of Indian dropouts in schools

The Education Ministry is committed to maintaining a low dropout rate among Indian students by ensuring that these teenagers stay in school.

In this regard, its deputy minister Datuk P.Kamalanathan said the ministry would keep track of the development of every Indian student.

"We want to tell these students that education is the only way for them to progress in this nation, thus we would control the number of dropouts through a monitoring system.

"Even the dropouts, we want to engage them back into receiving an education through various vocational training and train them with the skill required.

"We want them to know the importance of having such skills and education," he told Bernama at the Malaysian Indian Education Roadshow (MINDER) at the MIC headquarters, here today.

On the 10.6 per cent Indian students who had registered to enter various polytechnics last year, Kamalanathan said he was happy but believed more work needed to be done to reach a higher percentage.

"I am happy, but I will not be totally satisfied. I would be much happier if 6,000 students instead of 2,000 were placed in polytechnics."

Asked on the response among the Indian community to MINDER which was launched last year and managed to reach out to 15,000 students, he noted that this year's was not as tremendous.

Nevertheless, he said, the programme had witnessed a breakthrough.