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Ethnic Relations at School in Malaysia pp 35–41Cite as

Overview of RIMUP

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Abstract

The RIMUP is a programme under which students from mainly Malay primary schools and students from non-Malay primary schools participate in joint activities. In 2013, the Malaysian government announced the enhancement and scaling up of the RIMUP by increasing the number of RIMUP activities and reviewing the quality of activities beginning in 2016. The government expects that the RIMUP will be one of the most pragmatic and effective education policies for improving ethnic relations and developing national integration. In this chapter, the trajectory and travails of the RIMUP will be explained. In addition, the positive effect of the RIMUP on ethnic relations will be demonstrated based on the government’s previous survey results and reports and on the author’s survey results.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The programme has been expected to encourage not only students but also teachers and parents to be involved in its activities (Anonymous 2014; Ministry of Education Malaysia 2014a).

  2. 2.

    The RIMUP has been implemented in primary and secondary education. This study focuses on the RIMUP in primary education.

  3. 3.

    The Ministry of Education argues that the government has focused closely on the programme to support the development of national integration (Interview with the Ministry of Education Malaysia on 14 March 2016).

  4. 4.

    This study focuses on a cluster-level programme.

  5. 5.

    A cluster consisting of three types of primary schools (Malay, Chinese and Tamil) is called cluster A, while a cluster consisting of two types of primary schools is called cluster B (Ministry of Education Malaysia 2016, 121).

  6. 6.

    The contents of activities in a programme are normally decided by a committee.

  7. 7.

    In 2005, there were 5756 Malay primary schools, 1287 Chinese schools and 525 Tamil schools (Abdul 2005).

  8. 8.

    Schools argued that the government budget for the RIMUP was insufficient (Anonymous 2007b).

  9. 9.

    The government did not disclose the number and percentage of schools participating in RIMUP activities in 2011; however, we can guess that the percentage was approximately 3 per cent since the budget was reduced to one-tenth of its previous level.

  10. 10.

    However, it seems that the budget for the RIMUP drastically decreased since the number of students participating in the programme decreased from approximately 24,300 in 2014 to 13,500 in 2015 and 7100 in 2016 (see Chap. 7).

  11. 11.

    In 2013, there were 7743 public primary schools (Ministry of Education Malaysia 2014b).

  12. 12.

    In 2014, there were 7751 and 2366 public primary and secondary schools, respectively (Ministry of Education Malaysia 2014b).

  13. 13.

    Interview with the Ministry of Education Malaysia on 14 March 2016.

  14. 14.

    In practice, however, the government’s budget shortfall prevented the RIMUP from developing. In 2015, only 1641 primary and secondary schools participated in the RIMUP (16.2 per cent of primary and secondary schools) (Ministry of Education Malaysia 2016); in 2016, the number declined further to 630 (6.2 per cent of primary and secondary schools) in 2016 (Ministry of Education Malaysia 2017). Until 2015, the RIMUP was implemented throughout the country, while in 2016, it was conducted only in seven states: Johor, Kedah, Negeri Sembilan, Perak, Penang, Sabah and Sarawak (Ministry of Education Malaysia 2017).

  15. 15.

    This questionnaire is created based on the JPNIN questionnaire of the societal index (see Appendices B and C).

  16. 16.

    Question 7 is not related to the improvement of ethnic relations (see Appendix A).

References

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Kindai University, Osaka, Japan

    Noriyuki Segawa

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  1. Noriyuki Segawa
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Correspondence to Noriyuki Segawa .

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Segawa, N. (2019). Overview of RIMUP. In: Ethnic Relations at School in Malaysia. Palgrave Pivot, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-9857-5_4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-9857-5_4

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  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Pivot, Singapore

  • Print ISBN: 978-981-13-9856-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-981-13-9857-5

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