Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) in Malaysia: Policy, Program and Evaluation

In education, sustainable development (SD) targets and indicators have been clearly stated in SDG4. Malaysia’s commitment to promoting SD is evident from the integration of SD indicators in the national policy frameworks, including the National Education Blueprints since the 1970s. This paper discusses several government policies, programs, and projects on SD, particularly in education. It also discusses the evaluation of the country’s success in meeting the SDG4 targets and indicators, challenges and constraints in the implementation, and opportunities for the future. The author also suggests that data collected for various educational projects such as World Education Indicators (WEI) project and Quick Facts for instance be used for the calculation of enrolment and participation rates, pupil-teacher ratios, teacher salaries, teacher qualifications, educational attainment, and education expenditures, while the national census data and national exams data be used to estimate the achievement of the students alongside the international studies such as TIMSS, PISA, and TALIS for international comparisons of students’ achievement. Keywords—ESD in Malaysia, policy, program,