KUALA LUMPUR, Nov 24 ― A civil society group is planning to reduce student dropout rates in Malaysia, but is taking a different approach by tailoring its efforts towards parents instead of the students.

Gabungan Bertindak Malaysia (GBM) today launched a free 10-week course — which will be conducted in English, Malay, Mandarin and Tamil — exclusively for parents in sub-suburban schools in a bid to teach them the importance of getting involved in their children's education.

Tamil Foundation of Malaysia president Raghavan Annamalai, who has run this programme for the Tamil-speaking community for the past five years, said that while government initiatives exist, they do not target the most vital individuals in a student's life.

“The important element current programmes have overlooked is the parents. The parents are the most important educators in the house, the children are with them all the while.

“They have teachers when they're at school but when they go back, who is monitoring them in the house?” he said on the sidelines of the GBM Ibu Bapa Memastikan Peningkatan Akademik Anak (IMPAK) programme launch.

He added that the module, which was adapted from the American “Parents Assuring Students Success (PASS)” programme, has shown success by reducing the number of students entering Remove Classes after Standard Six, which is often the point when most students drop out.

GBM president Tan Yew Sing said that a major factor pushing students to drop out after primary school was their difficulty with language when switching from a Chinese or Tamil primary school to the Malay-based secondary schools.

“In Malaysia when we accept fact that there are different streams of language in primary school and when they go to secondary school, only 15 per cent go to Chinese independent school.

Raghavan Annamalai says while government initiatives exist, they do not target the most vital individuals in a student's life.

“The other 85 per cent go to government school and those who are not so good, they go to Remove Class. When they shift medium, that's the problem,” the education veteran said, having been in the industry for over 30 years.

GBM did not, however, have statistics to show the number of dropouts from those in removed class.

According to Shahril Aman, GBM's Concerned Student Dropouts Committee chairman, IMPAK will begin sometime during the first quarter of 2016 and will teach parents in participating schools a wide range of skills including teaching techniques, parental behaviour, financial management and nutrition.

The programme will also kick-start its “Training of Trainers” programme in December, which looks to train volunteers to teach the IMPAK module come January 2016.

According to GBM, who cited a study by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), the dropout rate of students  before secondary level was 2.9 per cent or 14,396 while the dropout rate of students prior to completing primary school education was 0.8 per cent or 3,920.

In February 2014, then Second Education Minister Datuk Seri Idris Jusoh, who is now the Higher Education Minister, announced plans to reduce the primary school dropout rate to zero by 2020 by creating new and creative programmes for students.

He said then that 2009 saw a dropout rate of 5.7 per cent, which decreased to 5.4 per cent in 2010 and to 3.6 per cent in 2012.