Sabah education director Datuk Raisin Saidin said a total of 291,911 of them were pupils in primary schools, while the remaining 222,159 were students in secondary schools.
"The number is based on the number of dilapidated schools which have been upgraded and the allocation of the infrastructure maintenance project for regular schools," he told Bernama.
Raisin said Sabah has more than 1,200 schools throughout the state with various building characteristics, and some of them still use wooden buildings which are over 50 years old.
He said identifying dilapidated school data in Sabah, especially on a scale of six and seven, had begun comprehensively in 2020, with a total of 414 schools detected in that category.
However, Raisin said, the data is increasingly declining due to the federal government's seriousness, through the MOE, in channelling allocations to Sabah to carry out dilapidated school repair works and maintenance of school buildings.
On April 18, Education Minister Fadhlina Sidek, during her working visit to Sabah, announced that 218 of the 338 poor school rehabilitation projects had been completed in the state thus far.
Fadhlina said as many as 60 projects are in the construction process and are expected to be completed soon, while the remaining 60 projects are in the pre-construction stage.
Commenting further, Raisin said that the increase in allocations to address dilapidated schools in Sabah can be seen through the 11th Malaysia Plan (11MP), followed by the 12MP, and the need to repair poor schools and maintain other school buildings in Sabah will also continue to be raised in 13MP.
According to him, Sabah is still facing the challenge of poor school infrastructure at a scale of six and seven, in addition to the lack of classrooms, especially to meet the demand for the opening of pre-schools and special education as well as the lack of science and technology design laboratory equipment.
Raisin said the number of schools with dilapidated buildings also depends on the threat of floods or landslide incidents.
He said the state education department is committed to making efforts to eliminate dilapidated schools by 2029 as one of the declarations in building a new landscape of education in the state.
He said that complete, conducive, comfortable and safe school infrastructure is crucial in empowering the education of Sabahan students by ensuring that learning facilities are provided to support efforts to improve their academic and co-curricular performance.
-- BERNAMA
