PUTRAJAYA, Jan 10 — The Education Ministry is considering having special programmes to combat the high rate of illiteracy among National Service (NS) trainees.

Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin said today his ministry was aware of the problem and was working with the Defence Ministry to identify the trainees and which schools they were from.

“We will obtain more detailed information from the ministry through NS; we want to identify which schools these students are from, whether urban or rural, national or private, and from there, perhaps we will hold special programmes to resolve the problem,” he told reporters at the Putrajaya International Convention Centre here.

According to a report on Star Online today, the Defence Ministry has discovered that about eight per cent of 6,667 NS trainees from 30 selected camps nationwide were unable to read and write.

The daily reported that the findings were based on a pilot project using a module called I-Smart conducted on the third batch of NS trainees in August last year.

“This is a very important discovery that we need to pay attention to because in our own ministry’s records, even among students not part of the NS, there is a small number of those who have reached Form Five but still have literacy problems,” Muhyiddin said.

He added that this was why his ministry introduced the “literacy and numeracy” programme two years ago as a part of its National Key Results Areas (NKRA) to test students’ level of understanding.

He said the programme helps to identify if a student has disabilities, whether physical, hearing or sight, from the early stages of education (Year One to Three).

“What we have done since last year has been very effective... Almost 90 per cent and above have accepted this learning process... But it takes three years to complete,” he said.

“So after three years, we must achieve our target to the best of our ability... if possible 100 per cent of students can read, count and write,” he added.