A/HRC/44/40/Add.1 students, 63 and the reported expulsion of students who fail to attend is a blunt and ineffective response. 42. Poverty still keeps many children out of school, despite programmes to support very low-income students run by the Ministry of Education. According to UNICEF, school affordability is “consistently identified as a major cause of inadequate preschool and uppersecondary enrolment rates”. 64 The Government subsidizes school fees, but parents may not be able to afford school uniforms, books and supplies or the missed-opportunity cost of child labour. 65 Low-income families repeatedly said that fees or costs associated with education, even as low as RM 1 (US$ 0.25), were enough to keep their children out of school. These low amounts could readily be covered by government programmes. 43. Despite high enrolment rates, certain populations face other sizeable barriers to education. Twelve per cent of households in Sarawak and 7.5 per cent in Sabah live more than 9 km from a government primary school. For secondary school, the numbers rise to 37.4 per cent in Sabah and 50.9 per cent in Sarawak.66 Children in rural areas often leave villages at a young age and stay in hostels far from their families in order to attend school, but this is far from an ideal situation. Those without identification, including stateless persons, migrants and some indigenous peoples, are not able to attend public schools and must make do with an informal education. 44. Far too many schools suffer from a lack of basic infrastructure and facilities or deteriorating conditions.67 There are many dilapidated schools in rural areas, especially in Sabah and Sarawak.68 According to the Ministry of Education, 584 of the 1,296 schools in Sabah have been classified as dilapidated by the Public Works Department. Eighty-four of them were rated unsafe, but just 22 were scheduled for repair in 2019.69 45. The quality of education is also concerning. As of 2015, 12 years of school in Malaysia was the equivalent of just 9 years when adjusted for quality. The country’s scores rank in the 25th percentile of the OECD average for reading and mathematics.70 46. Malaysia should increase investment in support for low-income students, improve access to education in rural areas, prioritize funding for school infrastructure maintenance and repair, and improve the overall quality of education. The Government should ensure that non-citizen children can benefit from public education and regulate and certify informal education programmes for children who fall through the cracks. It should withdraw its highly problematic reservations to articles 2 and 28 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child pertaining to non-discrimination and universal primary education. The Special Rapporteur is encouraged to learn that the Government is considering a policy of compulsory secondary education. Housing 47. Adequate housing is unaffordable for many and housing costs rose 87 per cent between 2010 and 2018, outpacing the 59 per cent rise in wages. 71 According to the World Bank, households with monthly incomes of less than RM 5,000 (US$ 1,229) experience “severe housing unaffordability”, with more than half of those in Kuala Lumpur earning RM 3,000–5,000 having “no access to housing within their capacity-to-pay”.72 As of 2018, 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 10 UNDP, Malaysia Human Development Report 2013: Redesigning an Inclusive Future, p. 159. Submission by UNICEF Malaysia, p.2 Ibid. Department of Statistics, Household Income and Basic Amenities Survey Report 2016, p. 99. UNDP, Malaysia Human Development Report 2013: Redesigning an Inclusive Future, p. 159. Ministry of Economic Affairs, Mid-term Review of the Eleventh Malaysia Plan 2016–2020, ch. 4, p. 12. Information provided by the Ministry of Education, 21 August 2019. Khazanah Research Institute, The State of Households 2018, pp. 5 and 174. World Bank, Malaysia Economic Monitor, December 2019: Making Ends Meet, p. 81. Ibid., p. 86.