Essay Final Draft

In the 21th century, the continuing growth in IT has successfully encouraged global interactions and wider internet access all around the world. This has introduced many modern means for education, which allow people to get global information, “challenging assimilation and assessment skills” with ease, thus making “learning … a truly lifelong activity—an activity in which the pace of technological change forces constant evaluation of the learning process itself” (WikiEducator, 2009). The internet access is especially important to high school students nowadays to access to various useful online educational resources and to hone their soft skills such as critical thinking skill and problem solving skill. The effective usage of  IT in education nurtures all-round students who are well-equipped with knowledge and valuable skills, allowing them to have comparative advantages to compete with others to get into better universities.

However, in Malaysia, due to the digital divide in high school students from rural and urban areas, for example, Kuala Lumpur, an urban area which has the highest broadband penetration rate of 119.4% and Sabah, a rural area which has the lowest broadband penetration rate of 43.8%, high school students from rural areas have less exposure to more information, causing them to be comparatively less competitive to get higher education. Based on the information provided by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), only 5% of high school students in Sabah, a rural area in Malaysia, pursue tertiary education (Leete, 2007).  These information shows a positive correlation between the broadband penetration rate and rate of students pursuing tertiary education in urban and rural areas. Apart from other factors such as family backgrounds, low incomes and others, the poor internet access in this area is the dominant factor that results in such low enrollment to universities among high school students in Sabah. In Malaysia, as high school students from rural areas are comparatively less competitive than students from urban areas to have better tertiary education as a result of disparity in the accessibility in online educational information, the Malaysian Communication and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) should increase the actions in narrowing the digital divide effectively by allocating more budget for increasing broadband penetration in rural areas so that fair competition among high school students.

Nowadays, people are aware that developing knowledge and skills is a way for an individual for securing employment and having higher living standard. Realising the importance of education, more and more parents in rural areas are sending their children to schools instead of asking them to work when they are young to earn a living. This positive phenomena has increased the percentage of youngsters who enroll in high schools in Malaysia. However, the poor broadband penetration in high schools in rural areas causes students to have less alternative to get more resourceful educational information other than knowledge from textbooks, which results in the limited exposure and knowledge received by them in school. Teachers in rural areas have also limited teaching materials and resources due to the difficulty in collecting useful resources online. The failure of the education institutions to provide sufficient modern facilities such as computer rooms and multimedia libraries also causes students to have limited means to be more knowledgeable and do well in public examinations, in which they have to compete with students from all states in Malaysia. The disparity in the accessibility of educational information causes high school students from rural areas to have comparatively lower performances in studies. Thus, they have disadvantages in competing with high school students from urban population to get into more prestigious universities. While the results of these public examinations is the determinant to get into prestigious universities, high school students are often disappointed as they cannot get into universities with their relatively bad results.

In addition, the poverty in most of the households rural areas in Malaysia worsens this problem. According to Leethe (2007), the percentage of households below the poverty line in Sabah is 20%, the highest among the states in Malaysia. Most of the families do not have enough income for their daily life expenditures, let alone buying computers and installing networks in their houses, which might make up a great proportion of their annual incomes. Therefore, students do not have the access to the internet to do research for their studies and get adequate preparation for tertiary education at home. Unlike the high school students in urban areas who can easily access the internet, a limitless library at one’s fingertips, to unlock their doubts and problems in studies, the high school students in rural areas do not have the opportunity to enjoy the benefits of internet usage. For instance, high school students in rural areas face more difficulties in improving their English speaking skills effectively as they can barely access the internet to watch videos or listen to recordings from websites such as Youtube. They can depend solely on their teachers in school and have limited chances to practice speaking in English. This scenario puts them at a distinct disadvantage, who then understandably restrict themselves when going on to the higher education and on the job market. As a result, high school students from urban areas are in ascendancy over the students from rural areas to get into their ideal universities.

To narrow the gap of internet usage between high school students from urban and rural areas, the MCMC has allocated RM1 billion under the Universal Service Provision (USP) fund to provide poor students from families with less than RM3000 monthly income in rural areas computers with internet access. This program aims to achieve broadband penetration of 75% in Malaysia by 2015 and also to encourage the usage of IT in the community to nurture a knowledgeable society. According to the article, “1.2 million 1Malaysia netbooks given out – ministry” (2014), to date, the MCMC has allocated 1.68 million units of 1Malaysia netbooks to rural community.

This commission makes further effort in building a technological society by introducing the 1Malaysia Wireless Village or “free wi-fi” for the rural areas in 2011. Under this program, wireless broadband will be brought to the doorsteps of small communities in remote villages including villages in Sabah, Sarawak, Malacca and Johor. In these places, registered users can enjoy the internet access without paying any fees. Roszeta Kassim, the head of MCMC southern region mentions that to date, there are 757 1Malaysia Wireless Village locations in Johor and Malacca, which are the two of other states which benefit from this pragmatic program.

Under these 2 programmes, students from low income families are benefiting from the computer with internet connection as they are able to make full use of the internet to do research which is related to their studies at home and at school. This allows them to improve in subjects that they are poor at, for instance English, mathematics and the sciences, which are very important in today’s world, by various means such as doing exercises provided online, forum discussions and free webcast lectures. Besides that, they are given the equal opportunities as high school students from urban area to collect information of universities from all over the world. After choosing an ideal university and understanding the prerequisites of that university, they might be more motivated to study harder and perform better in nation public examinations. Given the same study environment, the high school students from cities will not have any comparative advantages anymore as the results of students from “kampung” areas are as competitive as they are.

Also, the free internet access under the 1 Malaysia Wifi Village Programme can aide in encouraging the villagers to learn to use internet. These villagers include students, teachers and parents. With the skills of accessing internet, teachers can search for valuable resources to share in class while parents can help their children in their studies by teaching them the appropriate way to use internet access for education purposes besides making the learning journey more interesting. With the efforts of everyone, nurturing high school students with great exposure to the world and information will not be a tough task in rural areas.

                To bridge the digital gap between high school students from urban areas and rural areas, the MCMC should continue its effort. The meaningful projects should expand wider to other poor rural areas in Malaysia so that these areas will not be isolated from the digital world. Under these programmes, the improved study environment will strengthen the students’ ability in doing better in studies, thus to cause the fair competition to pursue tertiary education to arise among all high school students in Malaysia. With more highly educated human resources in this country, Malaysia will steadily grow and become prosperous as other developed countries.

References:

WikiEducator (28 August 2009). Need and Importance of Information Technology in Education. Retrieved October 9, 2014 from http://wikieducator.org/Need_and_Importance_of_Information_Technology_in_Education

Sijmons F. (2014, February 23). CompareHero: Breaking Broadband. Borneo Post Online. Retrieved October 9, 2014 from: http://www.theborneopost.com/2014/02/23/comparehero-breaking-broadband/

Leete R. (2007,March 28).  Sabah’s human development progress and challenges. Retrieved October 9, 2014 from: http://dspace.africaportal.org/jspui/bitstream/123456789/20417/1/Sabahs%20Human%20Development%20Progress%20and%20Challenges.pdf?1

Malaysian Communication and Multimedia Commission (2014, October 9). 1Malaysia wireless village. Retrieved October 9, 2014 from: http://usp.skmm.gov.my/Projects/Wireless-Village.aspx

Borneo Post Online. (2014, June 30) 1.2 million 1Malaysia netbooks given out – ministry. Retrieved October 9, 2014 from: www.theborneopost.com/2014/06/30/1-2-million-1malaysia-netbooks-given-out-ministry/