Article written by Yeo Bee Yin, State Assemblywoman for
Damansara Utama on Thursday 29th September 2016 in Petaling Jaya.
Rosmah Mansor, PERMATA
and Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) in Malaysia
For the past two weeks, Rosmah Mansor, PERMATA and her
supposedly “UNESCO” award have flooded the news portals. While how
the story develops is rather interesting to follow, I believe an important issue
that we should also look into is PERMATA, which was first conceived to
develop early childhood education in Malaysia.
James J. Heckman, Nobel Laureate in Economics and an
expert in the economics of human development, has been advocating government invesment
in early childhood care and education (ECCE). Heckman’s Equation proves statistically
that investing in early childhood saves taxpayer monies in the long run - good
ECCE results in lower social welfare cost, decreased crime rate and
increased tax revenue. In fact, ECCE
investment produces the highest rate of return on investment in human capital
development (as shown in the figure below).
Therefore, any government initiatives to develop ECCE
including PERMATA should not be brushed off immediately just because of the
person who advocates is not likable. Nevertheless,
despite funding PERMATA generously every year, there is generally a lack of
strategic direction by Putrajaya in ECCE development. There is no plan to
ensure there are good quality childcare and pre-school education at affordable
price for all Malaysian children.
Now, full-day childcare monthly fees in Klang Valley ranges
from RM 350 to more than RM2,000 per child depending on the quality of the
childcare centers. Childcare expenses have become an increased burden to many
young families. And only those who are well-to-do can send their children to
good quality childcare centers. The lack of good quality childcare at
affordable price drives women out of the workforce as it is more economical for
them to stay at home to teach and take care of the children. When women stop
working, the households go from dual-income and single-income, reducing the
total household incomes. Worse still, various reports have shown that this is
more likely to happen in low and middle income families, resulting in increased
gap between the rich and the poor.
Furthermore, women dropout from the workforce is an economic
loss to the country. This is especially true for Malaysia as our women are
increasingly better educated than men -
the enrollment to tertiary education is currently about 60% women and
only 40% men. As of now, Malaysia has
one of the lowest female labour participation rate in South East Asia with only
54% of women in working age in the workforce. The United Nation Development
Program (UNDP) calculated that increasing female participation rate to 70%
would boost Malaysia gross domestic product (GDP) by 2.9%, which is equivalent
to around RM 33 billion every year.
In short, by pushing and facilitating good quality yet
affordable childcare in Malaysia, we will be able to gain the best return of
investment on human development, increase household income, reduce inequality and
keep women’s talents in the workforce hence benefiting the country’s economy as
a whole.
To provide good and affordable childcare, Malaysia can learn
from Singapore, Australia, Finland and many other Scandinavian countries. Childcare
in those countries are subsidized by the the government whereby tiered
subsidies are given - amount of subsidies differ according to household income
level. The childcare centers in those countries are mainly run by private
operators at competitive market. To be eligible for the subsidies, they must meet
certain requirements set by the government, which usually comprise of student-teacher
ratio, qualifications of the teachers, safety standards and so on, to ensure
good quality childcare.
The Selangor government has similar subsidy programs such as
TUNAS (Skim Bantuan Tadika Selangor) and Si Kembar (Skim Bantuan Asuhan
Selangor). However, they are only limited to households with the income level
less than RM2,500 and provide only small amount of subsidies. To expand the
program to middle income families and increase the amount of subsidies to
include better quality childcare centers are beyond the state government’s
financial capability and jurisdictions. The Selangor state government budget is
only 1% of the federal government budget and ECCE is supposed to developed by
Education Ministry as well as Women, Family and Community Development Ministry.
(I believe PERMATA is strategically wrong to be parked under Prime Minister
Office.)
Early childhood is an important phase for cognitive,
socio-emotional, physical and intellectual development for children. Whether
Permata gets international recognition or not does not matter, what matters is
that Putrajaya will make and execute a comprehensive and holistic plan to ensure
that good quality childcare is available at affordable price, so that all our
children will have equal opportunity to learn and develop in the early age,
regardless of the income levels of the familes.
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