Malaysia will deploy military veterans as full-time hostel wardens at a group of elite boarding schools from Wednesday, in a new push to curb bullying after a series of abuse cases stirred widespread public anger over student safety.
The first 16 former Malaysian Armed Forces personnel will report for duty at eight Mara Junior Science Colleges, in a move reminiscent of Netflix’s hit K-drama Teach You a Lesson, where a Special Ops veteran takes on school bullies.
Mara Junior Science Colleges are a network of state-run residential schools focused on science education, with places reserved primarily for bumiputra students, the country’s ethnic Malay and indigenous majority.
It came a day after Mara chairman Asyraf Wajdi Dusuki had vowed that six students in Johor would be expelled if found guilty of bullying a 14-year-old whose parents said he had begged to leave the residential school because he could no longer endure the abuse.
“I want to reiterate the stand that I have repeatedly stressed to the entire MRSM community, ‘You touch, you go’,” Asyraf said in a social media post on Sunday night, using the Malay abbreviation for Mara Junior Science Colleges. “There will be no compromise and no place for bullies in MRSM.”