The Education Ministry will help develop the national Permata Pintar programme to improve early education among children aged below five.
Deputy Prime Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin, who is also the Education Minister, said this did not mean that the ministry would take over the running of the programme.
“We want to further expand the concept of early education. The Education Ministry has been entrusted with the responsibility to help programmes like this for children below five,” he said after closing the international conference on Early Childhood Education and Care.
He commended Permata patron Datin Seri Rosmah Mansor, wife of Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak, for establishing Permata centres and formulating the national policy on early childhood education and care, and its curriculum which advocated holistic development for children below five.
“While we have done very well in pre-school right up to secondary education, it is thus very timely for us now to focus our attention on early childhood education for children,” he said.
Muhyiddin said Malaysia was one of the countries with the “highest enrolled and continued education (survival) rate” out of 56 countries in a Education for All assessment undertaken by Unesco and Unicef.
“We are also fortunate that there is no gender discrimination and boys and girls have equal opportunities for education,” he said adding that the Unesco Education for All global monitoring report 2006 noted that enrolment for five-year-olds in Malaysia was among the highest in South-East Asia.
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