A TOTAL of 62,928 out of 122,062 Year One students who were selected for the Intervention Programme (Literacy and Numeracy) for the 2024/2025 session are illiterate, said the Ministry of Education (MOE).

Education DG Azman Adnan said out of the total, 45,465 students were not able to read while 13,669 students were numeracy illiterate.

The selected students accounted for 27.2% of the 448,113 Year One students nationwide.

“The three groups of students will be given intervention based on their level of mastery of literacy and numeracy.

“These students will be placed in small groups and they will then be given a suitable reading kit or module by the teachers,” he said at a press conference yesterday.

The programme, which lasts for three months, will assess the student’s literacy and numeracy skills before placing them back into the mainstream classes. 

Students who have not mastered the basic 3M skills (“membaca, menulis mengira” or reading, writing and counting) will continue with the intervention programme until they reach a minimum level before returning to the classroom.

“The Literacy and Numeracy Intervention Programme is one of the four initiatives under the Curriculum Intervention Programme.

“Among other initiatives include a follow-up curriculum (Primary School Standard Curriculum alignment); Parent-friendly Classroom Assessment (PBD) reporting; and training for teachers,” Azman said.

These four initiatives have been running simultaneously across Malaysia since last March.

Azman also said that these students from the intervention group will still move on to Year Two if they still have not mastered the 3M skills by the end of the 2024/2025 academic calendar.

“They (students in the intervention group) will still go up (to Year Two)…but they need to go through an intervention process to strengthen their ability in the curriculum.

“So far, we have no policy that restricts any student moving from Year One to Year Two or beyond,” he said. — TMR