Our children should not have to survive school

 

 Irene Sofiya Khairool Faisal dreamed of becoming a doctor like her late mother.

Idlan Fareeq Shahril was a Negeri Sembilan state cricket player. Yap Shing Xuen spent her weekends running and hiking with her family.

Zara Qairina Mahathir harboured hopes of being a school religious prefect (badar).

They were young people with ambitions, interests, relationships and futures that should have extended far beyond their secondary school years.

They should still have been learning and growing, making memories with their friends and families, discovering who they would become, and looking forward to the lives ahead of them.

Instead, all of their lives were tragically cut short at school under violent circumstances.

These are not isolated incidents. Disturbingly, we have seen school violence occur repeatedly in our schools.

In Malacca last year, a 15-year-old girl was gang raped by Form Five students. In August, a 14-year-old student lost her life following repeated racist comments by schoolmates.

Data shows grim reality

The available data underlines the scale of this problem. The recent Program for International School Assessment (Pisa) 2025 report found that 27 percent of Malaysian students experience at least one form of bullying a few times per month, higher than the 20 percent average across the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

Five percent of Malaysian students reported that upsetting information about them was published online without their consent at least a few times a month in the last 12 months.

Following such horrific incidents, Malaysians inevitably demand accountability from those who had a duty of care to these children.

Teachers, school leadership, and the Education Ministry face intense scrutiny from those calling for the reintroduction of harsher disciplinary measures.

Corporal punishment and even the minister’s announcement of investments in security cameras are touted as deterrents to potential perpetrators.

However, the reality is that such measures risk prioritising punitive reactions over evidence-informed prevention.

Corporal punishment not the answer

A 2025 World Health Organization (WHO) report affirmed that corporal punishment harms children’s physical and mental health, increases behavioural problems, and increases aggression and violence over time.

Physical punishment suppresses undesirable behaviour in the short term while creating a sense of fear that is counterproductive to learning.

Given Malaysian students’ overall declining performance, such reactive measures risk compounding factors that inhibit the attainment of better learning outcomes.

Given the evidence, what must shift to ensure that school violence in all its forms is no longer a reality all Malaysian children confront?

First, we must recognise that violence does not occur in a vacuum; it is shaped by the norms and environments in which it is tolerated.

It begins insidiously by normalising harmful beliefs about others that emerge in the form of sexist or racist attitudes.

For example, dismissing language that objectifies girls and women as locker room banter or “boys will be boys” enables perpetrators to escalate their actions which may finally culminate in explicit and irreversible physical violence.

Cornell University rape

The recent case of Jane Doe, a rape survivor at Cornell University in the United States, illustrates one of the worst forms of this escalation.

Snapchat messages advertising her “availability” were sent by one man to a Chi Phi fraternity group chat with over 50 members, emboldening seven young men to sexually assault her without intervention.

Teaching young people about respect and consent, while modelling these behaviours, do more to address the underlying causes of gender-based violence (GBV) than myopic, short-term measures such as corporal punishment.

Second, we can prevent school-related GBV by equipping boys and girls with support in navigating the challenges of adolescence.

While girls must continue to receive support to navigate gender-based risks, boys also need meaningful opportunities to discuss identity, relationships, emotional wellbeing and social expectations.

When boys lack trusted spaces to explore these issues, online communities promoting rigid or misogynistic ideas of masculinity may offer a sense of belonging at the expense of healthier relationships.

The proposed National Study on Men initiated by the Women, Family and Community Development Ministry is a promising start to addressing this critical issue.

Initiatives such as the Global Boyhood Initiative and MenEngage Alliance work with boys and men to reshape cultural norms around masculinity by promoting healthy emotional expression, positive relationships, and gender equality.

Boys then learn to resist harmful stereotypes, embrace empathy and care, and act as allies against bullying and inequality.

Third, the Education Ministry must concurrently institute and prioritise safeguarding of children in schools.

Safeguarding refers to promoting child wellbeing by preventing all forms of harm, including physical, emotional, sexual and financial abuse, neglect, and exploitation.

‘Protecting school’s image’

In a straw poll I conducted of 40 parents in October 2026, six children reported experiencing bullying, verbal and physical threats from peers in school.

Across all cases, affected students were discouraged from seeking recourse in order to “protect the school’s image”. School violence clearly does not happen in isolation, and is likely underreported due to stigma and opaque processes.

As such, safeguarding in the Malaysian context should empower children to know their rights and options for action.

Designated and trained teachers and student leaders also work to spot and report early signs of negative behaviour that could lead to safety issues.

Students’ reporting mechanisms in schools should not end up with “victim-blaming”.

Consequences for perpetrators should be proportionate to the severity of the harm. Ultimately, schools must respond firmly and proportionately to violence.

However, consequences after harm occurs cannot substitute for prevention, early intervention, survivor support and institutional accountability.

Irene, Idlan, Yap and Zara were more than victims of school violence. They were young people with futures that should never have been taken from them.

We cannot undo their deaths, but we can choose what their loss compels us to change.

That means moving beyond the comforting illusion that harsher punishments and more surveillance alone will make our schools safer.

It means building school communities where respect is taught and practised, where boys and girls can seek support without shame, where children can report harm without fear of retaliation, and where adults are held accountable for their duty to protect.

Our children should not have to survive school to have a future. They should be able to go to school expecting to learn, to belong, to grow and to come home.

The true measure of our response to these tragedies will not be how fiercely we punish after a child is harmed, but how seriously we act to prevent the next child from being harmed at all. - Mkini

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WAN FARIHAH AHMAD FAHMY is an education and gender equality specialist.

The views expressed here are those of the author/contributor and do not necessarily represent the views of MMKtT