KUALA LUMPUR, Jan 3 — If you’ve ever wondered why wealthy Malaysian parents choose to enrol their children into the MARA Junior Science College (MRSM) originally meant to give Bumiputera children from low-income homes a better shot in life, an alumnus says he has found the answer.
Majlis Amanah Rakyat (MARA) Student Association president Mohd Fadzil Yusof said that it was to teach the well-heeled children about the hardships in life while still young as they would be mingling with peers from very different socio-economic backgrounds.
“The answer I received surprised me, which is to teach children to live hard,” he disclosed in a video interview titled “MRSM for B40 only?” aired on Sinar Harian’s media platforms today.
He was speaking about the T20 parents, who are said to represent Malaysia’s top 20 percentile income earners. Basically those whose household income totals more than RM10,959 a month.
Fadzil found it curious that these T20 parents who could afford to send their children to private schools where fees easily cost RM3,000 a month would opt to “fight for admission into MRSM”.
He suggested that T20 parents could instead contribute to the cost of education at MRSM as an alternative, in response to another proposal to set up private schools under the MARA brand name.
“We can implement paid admission, different from paid schools,” he said.
In the same interview, MARA chairman Datuk Asyraf Wajdi Dusuki also clarified MRSM's admission policy, emphasising that the institution does not exclusively cater to poor students.
Instead, he said priority is given to children from low-income groups (B40), constituting 60 per cent of the student body.
The remaining 40 per cent includes students from middle-income (M40) and T20 backgrounds, provided they pass the MRSM admission test.
Asyraf Wajdi stressed that the council would not compromise on the education quality and will not entertain appeals from the well-connected even as he acknowledged that 10 to 15 per cent of rejected applicants have the opportunity to appeal, with priority still given to those who qualify and come from low-income families.
“But there's no denying that, even if they are excellent in T20, we still accept them because MRSM's policy is open.
“For me, we should not discriminate against children because the landscape and demographics of society have changed, the important thing is that they need to be taught to be in an atmosphere of reality,” he said.
