PUTRAJAYA, July 20 — Parents should file complaints with the Ministry of Education if they are charged excessively by private kindergartens when registering their children.

Deputy Education Minister Datuk P. Kamalanathan said this would enable the ministry to monitor and take appropriate action against the kindergarten operators involved.

He was commenting on a news report that some private kindergartens were charging up to RM9,000 a year for a pupil.

Kindergarten operators cannot arbitrarily raise or charge outrageously because they are subject to certain specific rules and mechanisms set by the ministry, he said.

He said the factors which determined the rate of payment for private kindergartens included their location, student enrolments, the quality of learning methods and the qualification of the teachers.

Kamalanathan was met by reporters after launching the Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) Exhibition in conjunction with the 2016 Asia Pacific Regional Policy Forum on Early Childhood Care and Education (APFEC 2016) here.

The business concept of private kindergartens differed from an operator to another, he said, adding that the choice was up to the parents themselves depending on their financial ability.

In another development, Kamalanathan said the Pepatih MySekolah application being implemented in four schools was a pilot project to test its effectiveness.

He said implementation of the application through the biometric technology allowed parents to monitor the children’s attendance by downloading the application in their smartphones.

"While schools may have specific reasons to use this application, but the ministry has underlined that such an innovation can only be implemented after obtaining the approval of the students’ parents,” he said.

The first system of its kind in Malaysia is now being implemented since January this year in four schools, namely Sekolah Menengah Kebangsaan (SMK) Batu Muda in Sentul, SMK Dato’ Ibrahim Yaacob in Jalan Ipoh, SMK Sungai Besi as well as in SMK Selandar in Melaka. — Bernama