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Since its onset in 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic has globally disrupted school operations, leading to a shift to some form of homeschooling arrangements. After two years, in March 2022, the government of Malaysia officially reopened all schools, ending its homeschooling program. In this paper, we exploit a purposefully designed, nationwide, cross-sectional survey of government-owned primary and secondary schools in Malaysia to document student learning experiences during the early months of the home-to-school transition. Our empirical analysis and choice of indicators is guided by a conceptual framework that distinguishes between two competing hypotheses related to school reopening experiences: resumption vs transitional disruption. We find that 59 % of secondary and 72 % of primary level students report that they are happy to be back in school. School reopening also coincides with a significant reduction in educational-related worries (e.g., concerns over dropout, learning loss, and loss of interest in study) and indices of negative emotions (i.e., feelings of being tense, depressed, and restless), particularly among secondary school students. More importantly, those satisfied upon return to school report a statistically significant reduction in worries related to learning loss. These correlations support the resumption hypothesis. Yet our data highlights an important puzzle: Even after school reopening, one-third of students report that they do not learn more, at least one-fifth report a struggle to catch up on studies, and up to 40 % are concerned about learning loss. The majority of learners additionally report not receiving more support from teachers and parents. Recipients of public aid as well as private (i.e., parental) support report being happy about school reopening and are less likely to report "not learning more." We conclude by discussing these somewhat paradoxical findings and the need for remedial measures beyond financial support for struggling learners to minimize post school reopening, transitional disruptions. • We develop a conceptual framework for the home-to-school transition, differentiating between resumption and disruption hypotheses. • Data from Malaysia's "Trust Schools Programme" is collected to analyze student experiences during the initial transition months. • Student responses show support for the resumption hypothesis, with reduced education-related worries and negative emotions upon school reopening. • Students satisfied with home schooling (PdPR) also reported positive experiences with school reopening, including less absenteeism, more study time, and increased happiness. • Significant disruptions were also reported, such as limited learning progress, struggles to catch up, learning loss concerns, and lack of support from teachers and parents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides a systematic assessment of the alleged exceptionality of Malaysia's development progress and its likely explanations, in comparative perspective. Using cross-country regressions and aggregate indices of education, health, poverty and gender equality outcomes, we produce evidence based on conditional correlations, offering three findings. First, the results support the hypothesis that Malaysia's human development progress has been exceptional compared with that of countries with a similar level of economic development, primarily for the period 1970–1990. Next, we show that such progress is associated with a combination of income-mediated and support-led mechanisms, including Malaysia's early emphasis on education and health inputs and infrastructure development. Finally, we look at long-term roots of its progress, arguing that early advantage in state capacity may be at the origin of Malaysia's successful implementation of poverty reduction and growth-enhancing policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Muslim-majority countries worldwide account for a disproportionately large proportion of the world's illiterate and poor population and are home to millions of out-of-school children. Many of these countries have grown rather slowly over the past decades. The lack of economic development have further limited economic integration among the OIC member states. Malaysia belongs to the small number of Muslim-majority countries that have proved an exception to this pattern. This paper therefore develops and proposes a three-pillar framework for people-centric economic integration in the D-8, using Malaysia as an engine for talent development and talent recirculation. To motivate the framework, we first provide a comparative assessment of Malaysia's progress in key social and economic indicators vis-à-vis D-8 member countries and critically review some of the main policies and strategies which defined Malaysia's economic transformation. We then introduce the three-pillar framework, explaining how Malaysia can offer a model for greater economic integration among the D-8 member states through (i) trade in cultural goods and services, (ii) international student flow and (iii) skilled labor mobility. We conclude by briefly commenting on some of the policy challenges for implementing the framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the nature and drivers of Vietnam's paradoxical performance in the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) – consistently high student achievement despite being the poorest of all participating countries and a centralized education system. We first document 'Vietnam advantage' in a wide-range of supply and demand-related indicators such as school participation rate, educational inequality, inputs and expenditure in cross-country regression models. We then estimate an augmented educational production function to show that these supply and demand-side advantages don't explain away Vietnam's positive deviance in PISA when compared to other participating developing and developed countries. We then conduct student-level analysis to examine Vietnam's performance in PISA 2012 in a regional context, vis-à-vis three high-spending but low-performing ASEAN member countries (Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand) and two high performing Asian countries (South Korea and Singapore). Pooled regression estimates show that, holding differences in various indices of socioeconomic background, the gap in average student test scores between Vietnam and South Korea in Reading and Science becomes statistically insignificant. Moreover, once school-specific differences are also accounted for, Vietnamese students do just as well as Singaporean across all subjects – equalizing for existing socioeconomic differences between countries would give Vietnam an even better advantage in PISA. A similar gain in PISA scores is absent in the case of Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand. The paper concludes by offering a cultural explanation for the significant variation in educational performance among high-spending East Asian countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights • We study Malaysia's performance in PISA 2012 vis-a-vis South Korea and Singapore. • Oaxaca decomposition method is used to explain between-country test scores gap. • The underlying educational production function controls for student, family, school and teacher specific factors. • Malaysia's under-performance is unexplained by between-country differences in student's family background and school resources. Abstract East Asia's phenomenal economic rise has been attributed to its early investment in human capital. While countries such as South Korea and Singapore dominate in international student assessments, other countries from the region (e.g. Malaysia) lag far behind despite heavy spending in education. This paper assesses student performance in mathematics, science and reading in Malaysia vis-à-vis Korea and Singapore by examining the relative contribution of individual, family background, school, teacher and institutional factors in explaining between-country test score differences. Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition analysis is performed using data from the 2012 round of Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) to determine how much of the between-country test scores gap can be explained by observed family and school specific characteristics. Our results demonstrate that while socio-economic and school specific factors matter, more than half of the achievement gap between the two high performers and Malaysia remains unexplained even after accounting for the contribution of those factors. We conclude by highlighting policy, institution and culture related explanations for this unexplained gap. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

COVID-19 school closure has disrupted education systems globally raising concerns over learning time loss. At the same time, social isolation at home has seen a decline in happiness level among young learners. Understanding the link between cognitive effort and emotional wellbeing is important for post-pandemic learning recovery interventions particularly if there is a feedback loop from happiness to learning. In this context, we use primary survey data collected during the first school closure in urban Malaysia to study the complex association between learning loss and student happiness. Machine learning methods are used to accommodate the multi-dimensional and interaction effects between the covariates that influence this association. Empirically, we find that the most important covariates are student gender, social economic status (SES) proxied by the number of books ownership, time spent on play and religious activity. Based on the results, we develop a conceptual framework of learning continuity by formalizing the importance of investment in emotional wellbeing. • 35% students faced learning disruption during COVID-19 school closure. • Machine learning methods attribute disruption to student's emotional health, gender & pandemic knowledge. • Increased play and religious time lead to happiness. • Conceptual framework developed describing how mental health matters for learning continuity at home. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using government secondary school English language textbooks from Malaysia, Indonesia, Pakistan and Bangladesh, we conducted a quantitative content analysis in order to identify gender stereotypes in school education. In total, 21 categories of exclusion and quality of representation were used to study gender stereotypes. Our analysis confirms a pro-male bias in textbooks: the aggregate female share is 40.4% in textual and pictorial indicators combined. Female occupations are mostly traditional and less prestigious while the characters are predominantly introverted and passive in terms of personality traits. Women are also shown to be mostly involved in domestic and in-door activities while men have a higher presence in professional roles. Systematic underrepresentation of females is evident regardless of whether we look at the text or pictures. A cross-country analysis shows that the female share in picture content is only 35.2% in Malaysia and Bangladesh. Overall, the proportion of female to male characters (text and pictures combined) is balanced in Malaysia and Indonesia (44.4% and 44.1% respectively) while this share is only 24.4% and 37.3% in Pakistani and Bangladeshi textbooks respectively. The finding of underrepresentation of women in Pakistani textbooks, in terms of quality and quantity, is robust to the selection of province-, grade- and subject-specific textbooks, as well as the range and type of categories used. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]