What happens when teachers do not teach for months in poor and / or rural communities? For those that have never experienced months-long teacherless classrooms under the Ministry of Education, we offer a thorough guide.
Extreme teacher absenteeism has become a decades-long disaster ⤤ of government policy, namely in anti-corruption and education.
Malaysia practices an exam-focused, time-constrained primary & secondary education curriculum. Yet, extreme teacher absenteeism persists: a violation of Constitutional proportions. Extreme teacher absenteeism is unchecked ⤤, appalling misconduct by corrupt senior public servants that target poor, rural, and/or otherwise powerless families' children.
It is exactly what it sounds like: for months at a time, students enter classrooms with zero teachers: no subject teacher and no replacement teacher. Their education is demolished because our government did not believe in its promises—and we did.
Yes, the MOE has been forced to publicly acknowledge its existence.
The ⤤ Malaysian ⤤ Ministry ⤤ of ⤤ Education ⤤ genuinely ⤤ categorically ⤤ knows ⤤, students know, parents know, and schools know ⤤.
Why haven't all these corrupt officers been disciplined or dismissed? Often, the corrupt protect the corrupt with the rationalizations, "So what if a family's future is demolished? They're poor anyways!" or "Well, I'm only stealing a little bit. Others are stealing more than me!"
Why no mass media exposes? Because most victims are poor, in rural areas, and/or disenfranchised, thus their exploitation is the status quo even in media circles.
The result is that corrupt ⤤ Education ⤤ Ministry ⤤ officers ⤤ quickly realized they can abuse their Federal Government association to cover up human rights violations and call it "culture" ⤤—the "culture" of abuse, the "culture" of corruption", the "culture" of oppression. But, whose culture is it: ours or theirs?
To protect any public servant from civil, criminal, or legal penalties is a form of criminal gratification—the basis of corruption under the MACC Act. Learn more here ⤤ .
Wait. Don't we have laws to stop crimes like corruption and abuse of power? These are our children! Let us recall the horrific SK Pos Tohoi scandal ⤤.
Five students dead. Two more near death. Significant allegations of abuse, extrajudicial beatings, and harassment by MOE officers.
Parents were not informed. Did MACC prosecute any Federal Government officers involved the alleged cover-up? Did the police?
Did the Education Service Commission discipline all negligent officers? Did the Education Minister publish the investigation report?
If not, surely we had checks and balances, right? Where was the EAIC? Where were MACC's oversight panels? Where was a Parliamentary Inquiry? Where was a Royal Commission of Inquiry?
If not, what signal did the Federal Government send to corrupt Education Ministry officers? The consequences of each failed check-and-balance in the education system is a life irreparably harmed.
What happened? Three years later, the SK Pos Tohoi survivors were forced to summon the Ministry of Education.
This same pattern—legal loopholes, zero transparency & silence, allegations of investigation interference & abuse of power—is what allows most misconduct including extreme teacher absenteeism to continue in Malaysia's education system.
These numbers are underreported and likely tied to allegations of Federal Education Ministry officers weaponizing their Federal Government's association to instead intimidate, extort, and/or silence child victims to shut down corruption and misconduct investigations. Examples these alleged cover-ups can be found below.
The Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD) organizes the Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS), an evidence-based survey and report.
Malaysia's last valid TALIS survey result, from 2009, shows that 19.5% of Malaysian principals reported teacher absenteeism ⤤ was hindering instruction "a lot" or "to some extent" at their school.
Extrapolate to today's 10,000 schools ⤤ under the Ministry of Education and afflicted schools could reach ~2,000 primary & secondary schools.
What of the 2013 TALIS report? Malaysia, under then-Education Minister Muhyiddin Yassin, was flagged with serious errors ⤤ (backup ⤤). The OECD wrote, "Malaysia: Many issues were discovered with coverage, reconciliation … teacher sampling, data inconsistencies, and deviations from the prescribed protocol." The misleading data from Malaysia then showed an enormous 13x reduction in absenteeism in hardly four years.
Three current Ministers have publicly admitted the scourge of extreme teacher absenteeism over the past 20 years.
Two decades of extreme teacher absenteeism later, it is clear that simply yelling "diseases are bad" does not make one a doctor.
Besides the two former Education Ministry leaders above (2008 and 2010), the Education Ministry has repeatedly admitted it has a serious extreme teacher absenteeism problem.
Teachers likewise have often been silenced and only rarely has extreme teacher absenteeism been thoroughly discussed, much less studied.
Mere hours after the High Court summons, Facebook groups collected thousands of messages from students and Malaysians of all walks of like: some were compiled by Malaysiakini ⤤. Many of former students voiced out similar experiences: months and months without a teacher while they state Education Ministry officers quietly covered up cases and/or refused to take action.
Considering the median income of many Sabahan families (you need not imagine ⤤), the power disparity explains why dehumanising, corrupt misconduct has become rampant in schools, including extreme teacher absenteeism. If a corrupt individual sent a bullet to the MACC Chief Commissioner ⤤, we would expect they would be jailed. Were they? No. If the MACC Chief Commissioner was forced to flee the country ⤤, what happens when the same corrupt forces target the poor, rural, and/or disenfranchised victims of corrupt MOE officers? Can our children flee or do we not enjoy the same privileges as top public servants?
How is it possible so many students claim teachers are absent for months with no action from the Ministry? Don't we have records, procedures, and laws to stop this?
When Education Ministry officers engage in misconduct, the disciplinary procedures are clear, like any misconduct at an office or restaurant. In schools where a teacher is absent without cause, the head of the department must make a report within five days; they investigate, gather witnesses, and collect documentary evidence. Their case against the negligent officer is then taken to the Disciplinary Board under the Education Services Commission. Yes: this is the actual procedure and timeline.
Do we notice the problem? The school investigates itself. The Ministry investigates itself.
Our records, procedures, and laws are toothless—a decades-long obvious conclusion to the B40 community—because these cannot defend against a critical type of abuse of power:
If the misconduct investigations are compromised, the "proper channel" is dead. This failure is not hypothetical: this failure has allegedly already halted multiple MOE investigations, according to whistleblowers:
The procedures are clear. The laws are clear. The Courts are clears. Under no circumstance is a months-long teacher-less classroom legal.
That is what is supposed to happen. But it didn't. Here's why, in so many cases:
Sometimes in long-term corruption cases, higher-ranking MOE officers create a cover-up to ensure their subordinate officers are not disciplined. Why, some ask, wouldn't the higher-ranking MOE officers report the absenteeism? Is that not their duty? Wouldn't they be applauded for stopping misconduct?
The answer lies in "long-term" misconduct: because any reports that suddenly expose a shocking long-term scandal will also expose the higher-ranking officers' own failures to prevent their subordinates' misconduct. Thus, these officers collectively agree to practice willful ignorance: don't report anything so that they can always maintain plausible deniability that "we simply never knew". If only we had known, these officers brazenly lie to the public, "surely" we would have taken action.
Of course, the Courts or the people will ask, "How could the superior officer not know? That corruption went on for so long. If the superior officers had done their duties, they would've prevented this corruption years ago. Their report exposes their own shocking negligence, which itself is a major disciplinary violation."
Of course, the Ministry, like any organization, seeks to minimize legal liability. But, for corrupt MOE officers, they twist that mentality to both commit misconduct and then cover it up. In their warped mindsets, they promise their colleagues that they are "saving" the Ministry from abuse & negligence scandals—while, in fact, they are becoming criminals, joining a conspiracy to commit corruption, obliterating the Ministry's reputation, destroying the lives of innocent children, disrupting the fabric of society, and are significantly increasing the Federal Government's legal liability.
As these corrupt officers have already engaged in egregious long-term misconduct, it becomes so easy to add more misconduct to the list: cover it up and halt the investigation, through coercion or otherwise, and they have "solved" all their problems. No scandal, no media report, no criminal prosecution: keep the thousands of stolen ringgit coming to their bank accounts each month and keep their "clean" reputation.
Some of these current caretakers of Malaysia's education (the school administrators, principals, and the district / state education / Ministry officers) have significantly damaged the reputation ⤤ of the Ministry of the Education to protect their disturbing personal power & steady wealth growth.
Thus, corrupt officers simply refuse to document the ongoing corruption at their school to attempt to avoid all liability.
Thus, the only fair investigations can be those without the involvement of the Ministry of Education that has a long-vested interest in appearing clean to the public's eye.
The Education Ministry's corruptible investigation process ⤤ can create the ultimate legal shield for corrupt Education Ministry officers. These corrupt public servants can act with harsh dehumanization & fear tactics to ensure exposure is limited by targeting poor, rural, or otherwise powerless families and their children that are unable to summon the Federal Government or are too afraid to go to the police or MACC—if and when those two enforcement agencies are willing to act.
Their alleged organized mafia-like strategy of the corrupt is that if the student can be convinced that he or she does not deserve humanity ("Make sure teachers refuse to acknowledge any blatant misconduct!"), then the student will forgo their legal rights, including the place where rights are actually guaranteed: in Court. This fear tactic has been carefully planned by corrupt officers to work 100% of the time. Until that day it won't.
All laws against misconduct actually depend on an incorruptible investigation process. It is the beginning and the end. Nothing functions without a fiercely independent investigative process as the underlying backbone: detection fails, investigations fail, and deterrence fails. This conclusion is obvious, but it is rarely even discussed in "education reform" circles and hardly ever litigated. It means justice is always out of reach for many poor, rural, and/or powerless families.
Corrupted investigations lead to zero consequences, which embolden the most corrupt public servants to steal more, hurt more, and abuse more, while also frightening and delegitimizing would-be whistleblowers.
If you are a child survivor of abuse and / or negligence, the stories below are disturbing and sensitive. All emphasis below is our own.
The conclusions are clear: corruption against children and corruption in education have cancerous, decades-long consequences that can tear millions of children's potential to shreds while enriching a ultra-tiny minority of the powerful, the wealthy, the protected, and the corrupt.
With data from UPSI, DOSM, and the Khazanah Research Institute ⤤,
Poor, rural, and/or powerless Malaysians know it best: corruption is a harsh, daily, and thoroughly lived experience.
Malaysia's poor are often chastised to "be more patient" or "it's because you did not work hard enough", while their children are told all the MOE always "knows what is best".
Yet when they go to school, they realized it is the teachers that were negligent and the students that were patient. In Sabah, the gap between those with power (e.g., senior public servants, politicians, wealthy individuals) and Sabah's children has long been a chasm. It is not even close. The difference is black and white ⤤:
In short,
Who is afraid of that?
As of today, our corruptible investigation process is sustained by elite-first politicians, greed-first senior public servants, and fearful and / or corrupt enforcement agencies who each 1) refuse to admit independent investigations are required (like in a Court of Law → why many elites try to bury litigation), 2) themselves insecure about their corruption and tattered reputations, so they neutralize any serious scrutiny that will expose their significant failures, and 3) enjoy a lavish lifestyle with limited to zero empathy of a B40 Malaysian's life experiences.
Change can only come with jurisdiction over the Ministry of Education: the Courts, Cabinet Ministers, Members of Parliament, and MACC / Police. All other parties hold extremely limited power alone; still, other institutions can be used to create pressure against these parties.
The Tiada.Guru Campaign has prepared a list of solutions, recently accepted into the CSO Platform for Reform's Rakyat Manifesto.