National schools not treated fairly in Budget 2020 - Ismail Sabri

PARLIAMENT | The Dewan Rakyat opposition leader Ismail Sabri Yaakob has accused the Pakatan Harapan government of not giving the national schools a fair treatment in the Budget 2020.

He drew a comparison of the RM300 million allocation to the 9,000 national schools with the RM15 million to be handed out to 60 Chinese independent high schools.

Ismail Sabri said each Chinese independent school will get on average RM250,000 in 2020, which is 6.5 times higher than the RM38,172 to be received by every national primary school.

He also pointed out that each classroom in the national school will receive RM1,987 while the Chinese primary school classroom will obtain RM2,602 and Tamil primary school will get RM11,299.

He said it is not a fair distribution and questioned the basis for the allocations to the different types of schools.

"If the concept of equality is applied, each national school will get more finds," he said during the Budget 2020 debate at Dewan Rakyat.

He urged the government to increase the allocation for the national schools.

Meanwhile, Shahidan Kassim (BN-Arau) interjected that the education budget should be allocated to the composition of the races in the country.

"The country comprises 70 percent Bumiputera, followed by Chinese (22.8 percent) and Indian (6.9 percent). What is the basis to give education aids, why not base it on the population?" asked Shahidan.

He asked if the government will reconsider its decision to allocate the same amount of funds to the tahfiz and missionary schools when Muslims comprise 63 percent of the population while Christians only make up 19 percent.

Shahidan said the budget tabled by Finance Minister Lim Guan Eng has touched race and religious sensitivity in the country. - Mkini