THE EDUCATION OF PREGNANT TEENAGERS IN MALAYSIA: AN OVERVIEW

Abstract

It has been reported that teenagers who become pregnant lose out opportunities for the future due to lack of education and low socioeconomy. It is inherent in the Eastern culture that premarital sex is a taboo and the situation is aggravated when the teenage girl is found pregnant. More often than not, these girls will be sent to a safe home to safeguard the interests of the girls and their families resulting in the social exclusion and reduce the chance of getting proper education. There is an impending need to specifically target more pregnant teenagers and teenage parents into education, training or employment to reduce their risk of long term social exclusion. The main question of, “How to encourage the reintegration of teenage mothers into the mainstream education system?” has sparked the interest in the areas of providing support to pregnant teenagers and teenage mothers in Malaysia. It was clear that for many of the pregnant young women and young mothers’ disengagement from education occurred prior to pregnancy with less than half of the young women attending school regularly at the point of conception. This paper intends to provide an overview of the educational experience in the mainstream education system of pregnant teenagers and teenage mothers of school age in Malaysia.