The Good Start Learning Centre (GSLC) is a refugee-run school catering mainly to refugee girls and boys aged between four and six. It was the first and most established pre-school for refugee children in Penang and now offers both morning and afternoon classes, including one class for older children who have never attended school. It is a key component of our work and is run with the full involvement of refugees. All the teachers are drawn from the refugee community, there is very good attendance of parents at parents - teachers meetings, and the Board of course includes refugees.

 

GSLC started from the efforts of one refugee, Hashim, who was teaching four young children in his front room in 2011 because there was no other educational opportunity for the children. From this small community-based beginning, GSLC now has its own rented location providing places in 2024 for 102 children: 44 in the morning and 58 in the afternoon. 42 are girls. GSLC is registered with the Education Unit of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

 

Parental and community involvement is very much encouraged and this links to our wider community-based work. Outings are organised, supported by local partners and friends. The networks created through the school provide a means of dissemination to share critical community information and parent education.   

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We are very fortunate to have consistent support from donors, as well as much appreciated support for teacher training and orientation. Support from donors such as L'Oreal Fund for Women, Partners in Asia, and JomServe has been fantastic in allowing us to continue and develop this work. And we have also been able to be centrally involved in initiatives like the cross-country Early Childhood Education project (BEECRC) whose Malaysian section was run by Universiti Sains Malaysia's Education Department under Dr Kim.

 

Good Start Learning Centre is also involved in the cross-Penang initiatives on child protection and safeguarding, which has come out of workshops and discussions led by Penang Working Group and Persatuan Komuniti Berdikari, supported in part by UNHCR's Child Protection programme. 

 

Meantime, we continue to participate in advocacy initiatives around securing a right to education for all children, including refugees. Please see our report on this. At the moment, less than 25% of refugee children get access to any early childhood education, about 45% get some access to some primary, and again less than 18% any access to any secondary education. This is a huge challenge, especially in the time of Sustainable Development Goals, and we are committed to helping in whatever way to make for a better education future for all children in Malaysia.

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