Inequality is defined as the unfair situation when some people have more

opportunities than the others (Online Cambridge Dictionary, 2016). Educational

inequality can be define as the difference in learning results, or efficacy, experienced
by students coming from different groups (Oppendisano & Turati, 2011). 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 area and less
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. Education is
important to ensure that Malaysian students benefit from good school and good
education, regardless of their family’s socio-economic status. This will affects their
current educational experiences and their future prospects. Therefore, inequalities in
education should be minimized to ensure that students are having the same
opportunity regardless who they are and where they stay.

The inequalities in Malaysia can been seen in two major aspects which is the
performance in urban and rural schools and the opportunity given to high social class
students. The performance in urban schools is usually higher as compared to rural
schools. This is because the inequality exists where schools in urban areas are having
better facilities and teaching resources. On the other hand, schools in rural area are
having problem of having basic facilities such as electricity and internet connection.
Besides, educational inequalities can be seen clearly from the aspect of pursuing
education especially tertiary education is rely on the social class of the students.
Students in our country have to undergo primary and secondary education before
moving on to tertiary education. Students from high social class tend to have a better
education advantage such as study in international school or private university college.
Some of them even afford to study oversea. This will cause a situation of educational
inequality where students who are rich can get a better course or having the
opportunity to further study in famous university around the world.

The first issue that related to education inequalities is the performance of

students from different area of the school around the country. The distribution of
schools is quite wide in our country as our country having the total land area of 329,613
square kilometres including Sabah and Sarawak. Thus, there is definitely schools built
in rural area. In the rural areas, there are schools with the insufficient facilities including
the basic facility like electricity. Due to its lack of electricity, the school can only manage
to provide a very basic and traditional teaching and learning method, which is chalk
and talk. This makes students to lose concentration and losing the opportunity to learn
better. As compared to schools in urban areas, they are equipped with LCD projectors,
speakers, internet access as well as E-library. All these methods allows students to
learn better and widen their knowledge. These two examples of schools make a great
difference in the quality of students that produced. Students in rural area might more
narrow minded, less general knowledge and less exposure to 21st century skills. All
these will lead to a major problem, which is students lose their interest in their studies.

In order to resolve this issue, there are a few measurements that can be taken
into consideration. Firstly, government can try to increase the aids given to schools in
rural area. With more funds given, students can upgrade the infrastructure of the
school to provide a conducive learning environment for students. Each class should at
least have sufficient lamps, fans, tables, and chairs. Students should feel comfortable
to learn in school and they will learn better. Besides, the government can try to improve
the basic facility in rural area especially in electricity supply and internet connection.
With this measurement, students can at least get access to the latest information with
the aids of internet to improve their learning quality. With internet, students can get
connected to the world and can explore them with various aspects of information to
help them in discovering their talents and interest. If these recommendations are been
taken into consideration, it will improve the general knowledge and proficiency of our
young generation when the issue is resolved.

Next, the socio-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 schools in Malaysia, which are national school, home school and
international school. Ministry of education has the policy of free education for everyone
for national school. However, sometimes the facilities and resources in national school
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 a 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 is adequate for moving on. It is undeniable that our government has provided
quite a lot of local universities which the fees is cheaper and providing a wide range of
courses. However, there are limitation of the number of students to be accepted by a
universities and normally students with better chance to get in the universities. For
those who are not selected, some of them which are richer can choose to study in
private university college or even study overseas. In the next few years, they are also
degree holders and even the cert 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 studies in main stream school. They 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 cert.

In order to address this issue, government should try to improve the facilities in
national schools in term of facilities and teaching resources. More funds should be
allocated to education where it will be used to facilities in the school. There are some
schools are leading the way where they installed “Smart Board” in every classroom in
school. Students are learning with the latest technology and with latest information.
However, although installing “Smart Board” in every schools is seems impractical, LCD
and speaker should be installed in every classroom in all schools. Students naturally
will reach positively to images or moving images like video. All these will trigger their
interest to study and create a positive learning environment for students to learn.

Besides, government or private sectors should be alert and providing more

opportunities for students to apply scholarship or loan 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 courses that they are interested in. This
will solve the situation of inequality situation where only rich students are having more
opportunities to further study or able to study on the field that they are interested in. By
doing this, poor student is having more chance to step in universities and study about
what they interested in.

All in all, education achievement that is being used in this study is a better
indicator, as it shows clearer picture of the education inequality. The highest education
inequalities were found in areas which have higher number of rural schools where
there are lacking of learning facilities. Besides, education inequalities is obvious
between students from high income family background and low income family
background. Social class is often seen as an intractable barrier to success, yet a
number of children from disadvantaged backgrounds still manage to show resilience
and succeed against the odds. The problem of educational inequalities should become
a serious matter for government to look into to create a better education system, hence
creating a better Malaysia.
Reference

Dictionary of Cambridge.(2016). Retrieved on February 27, 2016 from

http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/inequality

Donald.B.H.(2008).Inequality in Education. Retrieved on February 25, 2016 from

http://sociologia.davidjustino.com/wpcontent/uploads/2012/05/HOLSINGER20
08_inequality_in_education.pdf

Oppendisano & Turati. (2011). Educational inequality. Retrieved on February 29, 2016
from http://spcstrpr.org.files/Vol%202/issue%202%20/11e3-ad930.html

Rao, R.(2008). School Quality, Educational inequality and Economic Growth.

International Education Studies, 1(2), 135-141. Retrieved on March 1, 2016
from http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1057996.pdf