Recent change in the Malaysian government’s policy on international schools means that international schools can now look forward to local students entering their student bodies, as well as tax incentives.

For those who have no knowledge of our government’s prior policy on international school enrollment, Malaysian students were previously not allowed to enrol in international schools unless one parent was a foreigner or if the student had lived overseas for three or more years. Even after the policy change, there is still a 40 percent limit on local enrollment.

Besides being a rather nonsensical restriction on the freedom of parents to choose what sort of education they wish to provide their children, there are wider social and economic ramifications at stake. A recent article written by Bakri Musa argues that a “critical mass” of liberalised international schools can not only serve as excellent business investments (from affluent foreign students), but also social investments. Here, we are looking at international schools as a competitive force against our weak public schools - which could perhaps spur public schools to reform the same way our public universities are beginning to in the face of extensive private higher education.

Of course, one could point to the United States to buffet an argument against the liberalisation of private and international schools. Even with a substantially liberalised private (or rather, independent) school sector, American public schools have merely continued to deteriorate - plagued with all sorts of problems, ranging from allegations of entrenched constituencies and sheer corruption to weak syllabuses.

It should also be noted that entrance to Ivy League universities are dominated by students from independent schools, and interestingly, the same goes for the top UK universities - Cambridge and Oxford. This does show that if international schools are liberalised, and public schools fail to reform, seggregation could begin to extend between those capable of paying for international schools, and those who cannot. Of course, the various scholarships, whether from the government (e.g. JPA or MARA scholarships) or government-owned/related organisations (e.g. Petronas), could act as a mitigating factor since lower-income students do get some sort of advantage according to scholarship criteria.

So, should international schools, or more generally, independent schools be liberalised further? I’d like to say yes, even if just to adhere to laissez faire economics, but I do understand that there are many implications that must be studied before any decision is taken on this issue. I, therefore, believe that we should wait until the results from our budding reformation of public universities return before asking the government to look at this issue in further detail.