Malaysians have split down the middle when it comes to the idea of doing away with vernacular schools, with the top reason for opposition being fear of discrimination in single-stream schools, a survey found.

A Malaysiakini-commissioned survey found 51 percent of respondents supported the idea of only having single-stream education, while 49 percent did not.

The biggest resistance came from ethnic Chinese respondents, with two-thirds opposing the idea, while only 53 percent of ethnic Indian respondents did not support it, the survey by research firm Vase.ai found.

A small majority of bumiputera respondents (58 percent) supported single-stream education.

By Aidila Razak, Malaysiakini, 22 August 2019