FAKULTI PERNIAGAAN DAN PENGURUSAN

SEMESTER / TAHUN : SEPTEMBER-2019

KODE KURSUS : OUMH1203

TAJUK KURSUS : ENGLISH FOR WRITTEN COMMUNICATION

NO. MATRIKULASI : 970612435070001

NO. KAD PENGNEALAN : 970612435070

NO. TELEFON : 0183534376

E-MEL : thusha1206@gmail.com

PUSAT PEMBELAJARAN : GREENHILL LEARNING CENTRE (IPOH)

 INEQUALITY EDUCATIONS BETWEEN URBAN AND RURAL SCHOOLS IN
MALAYSIA CAUSES RURAL SCHOOL STUDENTS NOT AWARE OF SCHOLARSHIPS
AND GRANTS AVAILABLE

Education is a major contributor to the development of our social and economic capital. It
inspires creativity and fosters innovation, provides our youth with the necessary skills to be able
to compete in the modern labour market and is a key driver of growth in the economy. However,
in our country, Malaysia, it can be noticed that there is gap in education between urban and rural
schools causing the rural schools to be back dated in getting the informations. I would totally
agree for the statement given where many rural schools in this country are so isolated that the
students are not aware of scholarships and grants available to them to pursue their studies.

Inequality is defined as the unfair situation when some people have more opportunities than the
others. Educational inequalities can be defined as the difference in learning results, or efficacy,
experienced by students coming from different groups. Therefore, educational inequalities is the
difference that of a student’s educational experience where some groups of society has less
money, influence, staying in rural areas and lee opportunity was given to them. It also means that
less chance is given to the group of students who are undergoing inequality in pursuing their
studies.

The difference between rural and urban school education grows bigger day by day. Many
government do not even manage to fill the gap. Why does this happen in our country? Firstly,
lack of teachers in rural schools is the main cause for this issue and it has become a huge
obstacle on the way to education. Teacher is the most important role in order to create good
performance students. Most of the teacher did not want to posting in rural area because they
think it will bring difficulty to them. So, the majority of the teachers that were sent to the rural
areas are the new teachers that have less experience in teaching. Most of them did not master the
teaching technique yet because they are still new in teaching area. When we compared to
students in urban areas they usually have a teachers that have good communications skills in
English. Most of teachers compete for placement in urban schools. So rural school will have
inadequate teacher and it will make their learning progress disturbed and not running properly.
 The sosio-economic status of the student will also create the problem of educational
inequalities. There are students with different background. In this era, it seems that rich people
are having more opportunities to have better education. There are many types of school in
Malaysia, which are national school, home school and international school. Ministry of
education has the policy of free education for everyone in national school. However, sometimes
the facilities and resources in national schools is insufficient and not up to date. There will be a
lack in term of quality of the teacher, teaching resources, classroom facilities and the
environment of the school. Students have to pay large amount of fee to study in international
school where believed to have better facilities and it is conducive environment to learn better. In
term of tertiary education, rich students seems to have more options to further studies as long as
their results in adequate for moving on. It is undeniable that our government has provided quiet a
lot of courses. However, there are limitations of the numbers of students to be accepted by a
universities and normally student with better chance to get in the universities. For those who are
not related, some of them which are richer can choose to study in private university, college or
even overseas. In the next few years, they are also degree holders and even the certificate is more
valuable and accepted in Malaysia. This is a concrete example of educational inequality and will
cause those rich students to left out their stories in main stream school. There will be having the
mind that there will be a chance for them to further studies no matter what result that they get in
the public examination as long they get their SPM certificate..

My suggestion to overcome this problems is by giving some ideas to rural school students on
how to pursue their studies to higher level such as STPM, diploma, degrees, PhD, Masters and so
on. Students who is studying in urban school areas can conduct an activities to visit rural school
students so that they can share some ideas which they know. This type of activities can be done
as a co-curiculum activities also. By conducting this activities, students from both rural and
urban schools can get a strong bond between both of them and they can also increase their
knowledge level in pursuing their studies to higher level. Besides, teachers from urban schools
can also give some motivations and encouragement so that rural schools students can boost up
their motivation level to themselves which won’t lead them to give up in any situations.

Furthermore, universities from government or privates can also do a booth in rural schools so
that they know what are the courses available in universities and what are the financial supports
available to them which can support them to study. Usually, rural areas will face some problems
in their financial term. So, by giving them some ideas about financial supports such as
scholarships, PTPTN loans and so on can give them some encouragement and ideas to continue
their studies to university level. In the other hand, government and private sectors should be alert
and providing more opportunities for students to apply scholarship or loans for studies. The
procedure of applying loan and scholarship should be simplify and transparent. As long students
meet the requirement of applying the loan and scholarship, consideration should be given to help
students to further study in the course that they are interested in. This will solve the situation of
inequality where only rich students are having more opportunities to futher study and able to
study on the field that they are interested in. By doing this, poor students is having more chance
to step in universities and study about what they interested in.

Next, parents alos should play their roles at home. Although parents in rural areas have no
education, they can help their children performance in terms of giving them moral supports and
motivation to learn. Even they cannot help in terms of provide resources to learn, they can give a
support to their child to study hard to change the fate of their family. Parents should realize how
important of education to their child and their future. Parents can always ask their child about
their learning progress and accompanied them during doing their work. They also must always
care about their child performance and monitor their progress.

The student itself should realize the importance of education in their future lives. If they want a
better life in the future they must study hard to get a good performance. Usually students at rural
areas does not care about their education and most of them dropout from schooling. This is
because they do not have motivation in their study and their parents also did not care about their
performance. So in order to overcome the gap performance between students in rural and urban
areas, rural students should set their mind that education is important to change their lives. When
they have a mindset that education is important, they will study hard in order to get a good
achievement.

Rural and urban schools are characterized by its unique strength and weaknesses. There are
many variables that affect students’ achievement and those variables are directly related to
whether a school is considered a rural or an urban school. Some factors that contribute to the gap
performances between students in these two areas were determined and also recommendations in
order to overcome this problem were suggested. Although some recommendations have been
highlighted, solutions might not be easy for them. The suggestions for improving the educational
inequalities is that they must understand their environment properly, and maintain their inner
resources like self-efficacy and self-esteem.