Ain Husniza Saiful Nizam says one of the most crucial reforms Malaysia needs is the implementation of comprehensive sexual education, not the fragmented syllabus currently scattered across different subjects.
She adds that Malaysia still does not have an Anti-Bullying Act for students, nor a dedicated sexual harassment policy for schools, leaving children without clear protection or a safe channel to seek justice.
Ain also highlights the severe strain on mental health support in schools, where counselors face a ratio of 1 to 500 students, making it unrealistic to provide meaningful help.
Watch the full podcast on www.sinardaily.my or Sinar Daily's Youtube Channel.
00:00Currently, we have the ratio of one counsellor for 500 students.
00:05Can you imagine the sort of burden that is being held by the counsellor?
00:10And of course, even for the student themselves, they feel like they can't tell.
00:13The counsellor is the last person that they want to tell.
00:16So right now, one of the ask for us is as well to make sure that the ratio is at least one counsellor for 250 students.
00:22So for us, one of the most effective things is that I never feel the implementation of a comprehensive sexual education in our own school.
00:31So we do have a form of it in our current national system, which is called PEERS.
00:37However, what is PEERS is actually a, it's basically fragmented syllabus.
00:43So for example, they'll teach a little bit of sex education in pendidikan Islam.
00:48They'll teach a little bit of sex education in pendidikan moral, a little bit of it in pendidikan just money and pendidikan kesihatan.
00:54But what happens is that not every student is going to study that, right?
00:57Even in mind myself, you're not going to take pendidikan moral.
01:00So what happens is that it's not, the key word here is that it's not comprehensive.
01:04Not every student is able to learn from it.
01:08So that's one of our first demands.
01:11And then secondly, the enactment of the Anti-Bullying Act for students, because currently we don't have that.
01:19And also, more specifically, the enactment of an anti-sexual harassment bill.
01:23But basically from my case in hashtag MaySchoolSaverPlace after 2021, in 2022, after 30 years,
01:31we finally had the Anti-Sexual Harassment Bill, which is a general bill that allows victims of sexual harassment to go to a tribunal
01:38in which that they can actually request for their perpetrator and them to be judged by five juries.
01:47And then they can keep their identities anonymous.
01:50Because if you actually sue someone, you have to be, you have to publicize your identity, right?
01:54So that is what the Anti-Sexual Harassment Bill.
01:57And that is a win by itself.
01:58However, we do not have a specific fallacy for sexual harassment in schools.
02:03So that is what we are asking for, for young children who might not have access to go to the tribunal, right?
02:09And then thirdly, one of it was also the psychosocial and mental well-being of the teachers as well as the students in school.
02:20So currently, we have the ratio of one counsellor for 500 students.
02:26Can you imagine the sort of burden that, you know, is being held by the counsellor?
02:31And of course, even for the student themselves, they feel like they can't tell.
02:34The counsellor is the last person that they want to tell.
02:36So right now, one of the ask for us is as well to make sure that the ratio is at least one counsellor for 250 students.
02:43Yeah. So that's one of the main ones and then, at the end of the day, for these 11 demands to be fulfilled by the Ministry of Education within 30 days and if not, she would have to be respectfully to be asked to be resigned because of the inability to handle the safety school crisis.
Be the first to comment