Highlight : PKR's "free education" NOT FOR ALL

PKR tidak menawarkan Pelajaran Percuma buat semua rakyat.

Everybody knows education is a right and is a country’s biggest investment. Under PKR, free education is offered to those who is “layak” Further to that, given it is such a big investment, policies on education must be done from a wholistic view, not in snapshot. PKR fails to address both, my full article can be found in this link,

http://bicaraheartku.blogspot.se/2013/04/pkr-free-education-not-for-all_9139.html

Here is a summary for you…..

1.       PKR fails to define the term Layak. Is that ?

·         Academically qualified – impact?

·         Dependent on resource constraint – space and budget in IPTA?

·         Household means tested (this have unbalance taxation vs. benefit impact)

2.       PKR’s budget is unrealistic.

·         Shortage of education funding for IPTS

·         Did not consider population growth in their projection.

·         Did not consider increase in teacher’s salary as per promised in buku jingga.

·         Insufficient Yuran Sara hidup. (average is RM12k, PKR offers RM5k) With no PTPTN, how can lower income families survive this?

·         Discrimination for 66 thousand students will not get yuran sara hidup. PKR budgeted for 400k IPTA students but said there is 466k students in total.

·         Did not include budget for new IPTA building cost.

·         Did not included committed timeframe for building new IPTA and did not consider transition cost of IPTS while IPTA is being built.

·         If PKR is serious to fund education for all, is 466k students include corporate sponsored students who will now also study in IPTA.

·         If “layak” is means tested so the lower income can benefit from this system then the higher income people will be paying twice. It would mean that they will need to pay for their own kids education and then they would need to pay for another person’s kids education through tax.  It’s not a fair system.

·         Fail to explain about the impact for students studying abroad and their funding issue.

·         Failure to include cost of canceling existing contract and agreement that is already in place. This would mean that PKR will not be able to deliver this promise immediately

What is the benefit to mansuh PTPTN but PKR to create another form of funding? That’s not reforming education system that is nothing but just name change.