Abstract
The education performances among the indigenous group in Malaysia are deprived. Although the Government has given serious attention and continuous efforts to improve it, its performance is far behind other groups, especially in mathematics subjects. Hence, this study would like to identify the year six students from indigenous primary school’s mathematics performance. Additionally, we investigated if their perception, interest, and knowledge will influence the performance in mathematics. Eighty-six of the year six primary students from five indigenous schools in Selangor, Malaysia, participated in this study. Statistical techniques such as cross-tabulation, t-test, ANOVA, and Spearman rho correlation uses in detailed analysis. Overall, the result identified that the level of performance is low, even though they have a positive perception of learning mathematics. The result also indicated that those who have a high level of interest performed better. Finally, the study suggested that an intervention initiative at the elementary level is crucial, especially on the delivery system, involving teachers and others responsible for these students' education and welfare. Moreover, the Government should be given serious consideration in any national transformation program to ensure that indigenous peoples can stand alike with other groups in Malaysia.
Highlights
In Malaysia, the indigenous refers to natives in Peninsular Malaysia and is called as “Orang Asli." The education opportunity and performance among this indigenous community have been critical issues as they continue to be the most educationally disadvantaged group
The cross-tabulation analysis between perception level and performance level shows that 61.5% of the Orang Asli primary students achieved poor performance in Mathematics subject of Paper 1 even though they highly-perceived towards Mathematics
Base on the above result, it concluded that overall, the performance of Orang Asli Students is average to poor for paper one and poor for poor to paper two
Summary
In Malaysia, the indigenous refers to natives in Peninsular Malaysia and is called as “Orang Asli." The education opportunity and performance among this indigenous community have been critical issues as they continue to be the most educationally disadvantaged group. This issue widens and affects many aspects of political harmony and low socioeconomic levels among this group. The Malaysian Education Blueprint reported that only 30% of Orang Asli students complete secondary school, less than half the national average of 72%. They left the school as early as primary school, for the Year 2000 cohort, Year 6 to 7 had the highest dropout rates, at 47.23 percent, followed by grade 7 to grade 9 (23.26%) and grade 9 to grade 11(24.27%) (Nor, et al, 2011, JHEOA 2008). This study would like to identify the performance of Orang Asli on the core subject, Mathematics, for a first level, which is a primary student
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