The National Union of the Teaching Profession (NUTP) today questioned the independent committee for allowing schools to defend segregation of students by citing their participation in special programmes.

According to NUTP president Tengku Habsah Tengku Petera, students placed in schools under the special programme initiative did not have to be segregated from other students in the first place.

When interviewed today, she said the special programme was implemented in the early 1990s to enable rural students who failed to gain admittance into asrama, or residential schools, to enter national schools instead.

"When the programme was first introduced in national schools, the students were placed in mixed classes. After a few years, the students were separated into different classes.

"The first and second classes were reserved only for special programme students because the schools said it was easier to manage timetable arrangements," said Habsah.

However, the union president dismissed this saying the timetable arrangements were not major issues as schools only had to arrange for a few time slots a week to allow for students to attend religious classes or moral classes correspondingly.

She said that the committee had not adequately addressed the reasons for the schools to segregate students when the special programme could have worked without segregation.

Last Thursday, the independent committee set up to investigate allegations of racial segregation in schools said their findings showed that segregation appeared to have taken place in the majority of schools because of some students' participation in special programmes.

The committee concluded that there was weak evidence of racial segregation in the 210 schools investigated.

Issue raised earlier, nothing done

Meanwhile, former NUTP president Abu Bakar Shawkat Ali who was also present at the interview, revealed the issue of racial segregation was first raised in the Consultative Council in 1998 but received little attention.

Abu Bakar said this in response to criticism by Education Minister Musa Mohamad in Parliament yesterday that NUTP should have first raised the matter of segregation in the Consultative Council before going public.

"We did raise the issue during the meeting, it was discussed but nothing was done about it," added Abu Bakar.

Habsah also questioned the decision of the independent committee not to investigate allegations of racial segregation in SK Pelabuhan Kelang on the pretext that the school's name was not mentioned in NUTP's memorandum to the Education Ministry.

"The issue of SK Pelabuhan Kelang was already discussed publicly. The prime minister spoke on the matter as did the cabinet and parliament. The committee should have visited the school," she said.

"The committee said it is because the school was not named in the list but at the same time, they took it upon themselves to look into Chinese and Tamil schools which were also not in the list," Habsah added.

Relegated

Allegations of racial streaming in schools first surfaced when parents of several students of SK Pelabuhan Kelang complained that their children, who qualified among the top five in their classes were relegated to second best class.

The parents lodged their complaints with NUTP whose secretary-general N Siva Subramaniam later revealed the matter to the press, saying that some 10 percent of schools in Malaysia practised racial streaming.

Following this, Education Minister Musa Mohamad challenged the union to produce the full list of schools within one week.

When asked why NUTP had submitted an unverified list to the Education Ministry, Habsah said the union had no authority to investigate in the schools without the permission of the ministry.

"The memorandum issued by NUTP was not meant to be accusations against the Education Ministry. The list was intended for the minister to check the claims since the union has no authority to do it," she explained.

Habsah added the union was also unable to check through all the cases as the education minister had given only one week for the union to reveal the full list of schools said to be practising racial streaming.

Meanwhile, two headmasters are contemplating defamation suits against Siva for identifying their schools in the list submitted to the Education Ministry for alleged racial streaming. Five police reports were also lodged against Siva and NUTP by teachers in several Perak schools that were named on the list.