More students needed in science stream, says Idris Jusoh

Malaysia needs 500,000 science stream graduates to provide enough human capital to accelerate the country’s growth and achieve developed nation status by 2020.

In this light, the Education Ministry is looking at more ways to promote interest in science among school-going students. At the moment, roughly 37 per cent of students enrolled in secondary schools are in the science stream.

The objective is to have 60 per cent of students in the sciences.

In 2012, less than 20 per cent of the 472,541 students who sat for the Sijil Pelajaran Malaysia (SPM) were science stream students.