Give schools room to breathe. Only then can our education move forward
By Professor Dato Dr Ahmad Ibrahim
At a recent conversation on the book “Breaking but Not Broken” held at the Publika in KL, a consensus emerged: governance is the core malady behind the poor performance of Malaysia’s public schools. And the root of that governance problem points to a frustrating reality — schools have almost no autonomy. Privately run schools, which enjoy greater control over their management, tend to perform better. The question then follows naturally: why can’t public schools be given the same room to manoeuvre?
The answer is not “cannot,” but “dare not.” Yet genuine education reform requires precisely that daring — a cautious, gradual, and supported approach that returns power to the schools.
Malaysia is not entirely without a framework for school autonomy. The 2013–2025 Education Blueprint explicitly sets out “School-Based Management” (APBS) and decentralisation goals, calling for tailored, needs-based solutions to be delegated to state education departments, district education offices, and schools. High-performing schools (SBT) are theoretically entitled to flexibility in curriculum, finance, human resources, and even student selection.
But a vast gulf exists between autonomy on paper and autonomy in practice. Research shows that Malaysian teachers perceive less autonomy than their peers in the UK and Finland, rooted in what amounts to “guided autonomy” — power is nominally devolved, but every decision still requires layer upon layer of approval. In other words, Malaysia’s problem is not whether to devolve power, but how to ensure devolution does not become another form of central control.
Singapore is often held up as the exemplar of educational success.
Where does the difference lie? The answer points to one critical variable: whether teachers control their own professional development. In Singapore, teacher training is led by teachers themselves through school-based professional learning teams and cross-school professional learning communities; in Malaysia, similar decisions are controlled by external administrators. Singaporean schools score significantly higher than Japan and Korea on autonomy over resource allocation and personnel management, but this autonomy is paired with clear performance accountability — a model of “balanced autonomy and accountability” that sparks school-level innovation while maintaining coherence in reform direction.
The lesson for Malaysia is clear: genuine autonomy is not simply transferring power from Putrajaya to the principal’s office. It is returning professional judgement to educators.
Overnight, full-scale devolution would be an earthquake for a system as highly centralised as Malaysia’s. A more viable path is differentiated, gradual autonomy — granting varying degrees of independence based on each school’s readiness and capacity.
Malaysia already has an institutional tool at hand: the High-Performing School (SBT) framework. The problem is that SBT certification and maintenance depend heavily on central evaluation, which itself makes autonomy “conditional and revocable.”
The way forward is not to overturn SBT, but to lower the threshold for autonomy while strengthening capacity-building at the school level.
There is a popular view that teachers in Malaysia are “crushed by excessive reporting, yet trusted far too little.” That sentence captures the absurdity of the current system: schools are held accountable for every outcome, yet not permitted to make meaningful decisions about the process.
Autonomy and accountability must be designed in tandem. What Malaysia needs to do is transform the current “compliance-based accountability” — filling forms, writing reports, responding to inspections — into “developmental accountability”: schools take responsibility for their own professional decisions, while the ministry provides support, resources, and professional development opportunities.
If Malaysia genuinely wants to improve school performance, the “simplest and most powerful” reform is to let teachers control their own training. When professional learning is led by educators themselves, it can truly respond to the real needs of the classroom rather than being a product of administrative directives.
The discussion sparked by “Breaking but Not Broken” touches a deeper question: treating schools as administrative terminals for ministry policy, or professional sites where education happens?
If the answer is the latter, then autonomy is not something to be “granted” — it is something to be “returned.” What Malaysia needs is a careful institutional reconstruction: use the existing SBT framework as a starting point, lower the threshold for autonomy, strengthen school leadership and teacher professionalism, shift accountability from compliance-oriented to development-oriented, and allow states to pioneer different devolution paths.
The experiences of Japan and Singapore prove that a model in which the centre retains the power to set vision and standards while schools hold autonomy over implementation paths — “loose in the right places, tight in the right places” — is viable. Malaysia’s challenge is to find its own rhythm: fast enough to break the deadlock, steady enough to avoid derailment. The quality of education ultimately depends on whether the people closest to students — teachers and principals — are trusted, empowered, and allowed to exercise professional judgement.
The author is affiliated with the Tan Sri Omar Centre for STI Policy Studies at UCSI University and is an Adjunct Professor at the Ungku Aziz Centre for Development Studies, Universiti Malaya. He can be reached at ahmadibrahim@ucsiuniversity.edu.my.