Enhancing Child Care Centres In Malaysia Through Legal Analysis

Abstract

Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) is crucial in developing a well-balanced individual. The rising number of mothers going to work nowadays results in the rising need for child care services to take care of their children. Therefore, quality child care service is essential in ensuring that the children are well taken care of in terms of not only their health and safety but also their developmental growth. Thus, child care services should not be considered as mere custody but rather the earliest stage of education of a child. The issue of low child care quality is significant to be highlighted on, as indicated by the research and commentaries made by the ECCE experts in Malaysia. Therefore, in the effort to improve the quality of child care services in Malaysia, the legislative framework needs to be scrutinised for further enhancement. Laws and regulations provide high impact in ensuring high quality child care services. This thesis critically examines the Malaysian laws and regulations on child care centres to consider whether the laws and regulations are adequate or below the level of acceptable care and need further improvement. This research is done by the method of doctrinal research in the form of library-based data collection. In improving the laws and regulations of child care centres in Malaysia, this thesis analyses the Child Care Centre Act 1984 and Child Care Centre Regulations 2012 to consider the legislative efforts needed in improving the quality of child care centres in Malaysia. Besides that, this research examines the practices adopted by other developed countries for Malaysia to learn lessons from their legislative reform of laws and regulations on child care centres. This research finds that enhancement of the essential elements of child care laws and regulations that involve the introductory features of statutes, the six features of legal requirements which are the proven researched structural quality features, and efficiency of the authority in enforcing the laws and regulations are important. The six features of legal requirements are adult to child ratio, group size, education and training of staff, physical environment, health and safety, and educational programme. It is proposed that laws and regulations on Malaysian child care need to be reviewed. Thus, enhancements of the legislations of Malaysian child care settings are proposed in this study in the effort to ensure that children are provided with better care and education. Amended and additional provision of the statutes of child care laws and regulations are suggested in this study in creating an effective legal framework of child care for Malaysia. The enhancements are pivotal as high quality early childhood care and education shall safeguard the health and safety of the children as well as assisting in the developmental growth of the children.