1.

0 INTRODUCTION

According to Taylor (2016), inclusive education means giving each and every
child an opportunity to learn at their local school with enough support for them to
reach their full potential. This does not require special institutions, care or expensive
materials. It simply means that all students should have the opportunity to receive
individualised services and approaches to learning. In Malaysia, the Ministry of
Education provides children with disabilities with three schooling options under the
national special needs education system namely, Special Education Schools, Special
Education Integrated (SEIP) and Inclusive Education Programme (Ministry of
Education, 2013).

Besides that, the Malaysian special needs education system can be analysed
along five dimension through three wave which the first wave (2013-2015) focus on
the strengthening existing foundation that has been implemented. Next, the second
wave (2016-2020) is to scale up the initiatives. Lastly, the third wave (2021-2025) is to
evaluate and consolidate the initiatives.

2.0 AN ISSUE FACED IN THE IMPLEMENTATION OF INCLUSIVE EDUCATION IN

MALAYSIA

There are several issues in implementing inclusive education in Malaysia. The

most critical issue is that lack of support system that divides into several aspects. The
first aspect is lack of funding. It is known that the inclusive education programmes are
expensive to conduct as it involves high cost in improving the infrastructures such as
room modification, purchase of teaching aids or resources and raw materials to
facilitate teaching and learning. Second aspect is that lack of staff members to run the
said program successfully. It is essential for the inclusive education programmes to
have dedicated and committed individuals to conduct seminars and workshops. This
is to ensure the objectives of the programme can be achieved successfully by
discussing and revising among the experts in this field to help the special educators in
mainstream school. Last but not least, the aspect is that the difficulty of integration
and programme implementation. It is no doubt that inclusive education programmes
require parental support for their success. Sadly, parental support is minimal and
sporadic in most cases in this country. As a result, this makes integration in learning
difficult. In addition to that, programme implementation is hampered by poor
community support. Other aspects include shortage of qualified teachers, shortage of
professional support such as speech and language therapists and educational
psychologists, and insufficient assistive technological devices like hearing aids and
Braille typing machines (Manisah, Ramlee, and Zalizan, 2006).

3.0 HOW INCLUSIVE EDUCATION PROGRAM CAN BE IMPLEMENTED IN

MALAYSIA SUCCESSFULLY

The efforts that can be taken by the responsible authorities in order to implement
inclusive education programme in Malaysia successfully is by firstly promoting
collaboration between mainstream and special education teachers in an inclusive
classroom and there should be a clear guideline on Inclusive Education
implementation (Manisah, Ramlee and Zalizan, 2006). Thus, exposure and training in
special education for mainstream teachers as well as pedagogical training for special
education teachers should be provided.

Other than that, smart partnership between any organization and school as well
as managerial support between mainstream and special education teachers is a must
to ensure a better implementation of this programme that will benefit both special
need students and the school itself (Lee and Low, 2014). Other efforts include
continuous professional development, provision of teaching aids and related facilities
that needed for special educators engaged in inclusive education programmes for
children with learning disabilities in the government school (Ministry of Education,
2013).

4.0 CONCLUSION

In a nutshell, it can be said that, despite Inclusive Education Programme is still in

its infancy stage in Malaysia, the implementation of the IEP initiative has proven that
Ministry of Education is committed towards fulfilling the rights of students with Special
Educational Needs in gaining equal educational access as suggested by the Least
Restrictive Environment mandate.