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Budget 2027 allocates nearly RM70 billion to education and almost RM48 billion to health, alongside billions more in household assistance. But how much of this public investment translates into better outcomes for children? Are we spending enough? And are we spending where it matters most? On this episode of #ConsiderThis Melisa Idris speaks with Juanita Vasquez Escallon, Chief of Social Policy at UNICEF Malaysia and Tham Yin Yee, Social Policy Specialist at UNICEF Malaysia.
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00:18Hello and good evening. I'm Melissa Idris. Welcome to Consider This. This is the show
00:22where we want you to consider and reconsider what you know of the news of the day. Budget
00:272027 allocates nearly RM70 billion to education and almost RM48 billion to health, alongside
00:35with billions more for household assistance. But how much of this public investment will
00:41translate to better outcomes for children? Are we spending enough? And are we spending
00:46where it matters most? Well, today on the show, to discuss this further, I have the good folks
00:51from UNICEF Malaysia, Juanita Vasquez Eskayon, who is the Chief of Social Policy at UNICEF
00:57Malaysia, as well as Tam Yin Yi, who's a Social Policy Specialist. Welcome to the show. Thank
01:04you so much for joining me today. I thought I'd begin with a question for the both of you.
01:08I'd love to hear your answers for both. When you look at Budget 2027 as a whole, how would
01:15you, I guess, assess the level of public investment into children specifically for the coming year,
01:22for 2027? If I may begin with you, Juanita. Budget 2027 has a lot of wins for children and I
01:30think we
01:30can talk about a few of this as we go through. For example, on social protection, the expansion
01:36of STR and SARA, and particularly also on education, where we've seen a large increase of the funds
01:44that are going to the education sector. We also see some specific wins, for example, on certain areas
01:53of disability, as well as on the expansion of the goods and services that are made available for families.
02:00But maybe I pass it over to Yin Yi to go a bit deeper into what we see.
02:03So, I mean, you asked about how we assess public expenditure for children and the way we do it
02:08is we look into the budgets as well as the financial statements of the government to try
02:13to see where are the government priorities are. And we see, for example, we know that very obvious,
02:18when you look at Budget 2027, you mentioned it, education gets the largest chunk as always.
02:23I think that really still stood out as a signal of the government that they really still prioritise
02:28children in the future of the country. So, that's on education. And I mean, we look into adequacy,
02:33actually. So, what we try to see is we benchmark it to international benchmarks.
02:38So, internationally, we say, how much is enough for education? And that is 15% of the total
02:44government expenditure. GDP. Oh, okay. Oh, government expenditure.
02:47Or 4% of GDP. Yeah. So, but on that front, actually, it's doing quite well. So, when we try
02:51to map
02:52how much is the government spending on education across different ministries, this includes MOHR,
02:56even for TVET, for example, KEMAS for preschools, Japanese for preschools. And we find that about
03:0119.9% of the 2027 budget is on education. So, that's really good, actually.
03:08Sorry, 19, you said? 19.9%.
03:10So, just under 20%. Yeah. That's big. That's quite a big chunk.
03:13Yes, yes. So, we do spend a lot on education.
03:16May I just stop you there and question something? Just want to explore something.
03:23The biggest allocation always goes to education and health. But I do want to ask you whether we
03:29should see this as proof that it is an investment in children. Because a lot of this has to do
03:35with
03:36repairing current infrastructure. It's not so much development expenditure as opposed to
03:43operational expenditure. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. We are right. So, we try to look into different levels.
03:47I think one is that we try to look into where does the money go to. For example, which level
03:51of education?
03:51We know that the country now recognise that the earliest years are important. Early child care
03:57education is important. But how much of the money of the education budget is going towards ECCE
04:02versus primary, secondary and tertiary education? And what we find is 3.9%. So, that's not much. I mean,
04:09we say that it's the most important years for foundational learning. Yet, we spend only 3.9%.
04:14When I think, so, UNICEF and UNESCO, we recommend 10% of the total education budget should go towards
04:20preschool, pre-primary education. I love these figures. I have to say, I think it's been
04:25quite talked about particularly post-COVID, post the pandemic. We know the WHO is recommending
04:31at least 5% of GDP expenditure for healthcare. So, I love that we have figures now for what to
04:42spend
04:42or what the benchmarks should be for education, specifically for early childhood education and the
04:46like. Wonderful. So, talk to me a little bit about some of the things that you feel were
04:53maybe missing a little bit in Budget 2027, particularly with the education portfolio. I do like some of
04:59them, particularly the meals, supplementary meals for school meals for children. So, maybe we can begin
05:07there. Let's delve into some of the allocations that you see. Where do you see the money going and do
05:13you
05:13like what you see? You mentioned it earlier that a large chunk goes to operational expenditure.
05:19And that's unavoidable. And we know that sectors like health and like education is very labor
05:24intensive. But it's just that we are wondering, are we squeezing out then the development expenditure,
05:30that part of it. And also, I think what's missing out of it, you mentioned, I think the school meals
05:35program. A large chunk of it does go to the school meal program. But perhaps what can be better is
05:40because we know stunting is a huge issue for Malaysia still. Us being such a rich country,
05:45we still struggle with stunting. And that really matters in the earliest year, the first two years
05:51of the children's life, the first thousand days. So, what can we do better to supplement that?
05:56For example, you mentioned missing areas. I think we also want to raise, for example, mental health.
06:01Mental health is also increasingly a worrying problem. We have, I think, 13% of our children, teenagers,
06:08this is from national representative studies by the MOH themselves, that our children,
06:1213% of them are thinking about suicide. And almost 10% tried it. That's really worrying. I mean,
06:18then what are we doing about it? So, we do see the budgets. So, this is across the state in
06:22healthcare,
06:23it's increasing for mental health. But as a share of total health budgets, it's on a reducing trend.
06:28It's not big enough. Wow, I didn't realize the figures were so worrying. Was that 13%
06:34of children have suicide ideas? Yes. That's quite shocking. Can I ask you, Juanita, when we think
06:42about the issue of mental health in education, how far along are we in Malaysia, or that conversation,
06:48how far along are we in this conversation of talking about mental health, but also investing
06:53in mental health? Are other countries doing it differently or doing it better? Mental health is a
06:59topic that has gained more momentum lately. And we do see coming up in more discussions,
07:06we don't necessarily see it reflected in the budget. As a percentage of the health budget,
07:10we have seen that the amount that is allocated to mental health, at least from what we can see
07:15from the documents, has been decreasing over time, even though we have more and more data pointing
07:21towards that this is actually a big issue. And one thing maybe in a broader discussion,
07:26when it comes to health or child protection, is we could also look at the budgets from the
07:32prevention side and the response. How much is going to prevention? It's usually much more cost
07:37effective to invest in prevention than to later invest in response. But we're seeing the opposite.
07:43We're seeing a large amount going to response, curative services, and much less going, for example,
07:49to public health, nutrition, prevention of stunting. So this is perhaps a trade-off. It might be that it
07:58takes longer to see the gains, that the return to investment, you don't necessarily see it now,
08:03but it will cost the finances in later years. No, I hear you because that the investment in specifically
08:12children's safety and prevention of harm is that investment that is harder to see.
08:19Let's talk about how should we assess whether Malaysia is investing enough in preventing
08:25violence, abuse, neglect, exploitation, anything that causes harm to the child, as opposed to
08:32responding to it after harm has already occurred. Help me think about what that looks like. What does
08:39a government investment in children's safety actually look like in practice? And I'm sure
08:43it's multifaceted, but would you like to take this question? Yeah, I mean, but to be honest,
08:47that's the difficulty and we don't really have an answer for that because child protection,
08:51protection itself, there isn't a ministry that's in charge of protection. And what more if you want
08:55to segregate into child protection? So we, I think what we know is that there are more needs, but how
09:02do we
09:02look at the budget data and see what's going towards child protection? And you know, what's prevention
09:06versus what's after that? We really don't have the numbers on that. So I think on this part,
09:10we, which is why I think we recommend that the government to, to implement a child budget tagging
09:15to see what part of it, just like you, I think you mentioned earlier to the, the gender responsive
09:20budgeting, but can we do the same for child responsive budgeting? Okay, maybe, maybe walk us through what
09:25does that look like? Child budget tagging. So we were, I think, familiar with the idea of gender responsive
09:31budgeting, maybe not as mainstream as I would like it to be, but there's an idea that, that there needs
09:37to be disaggregated data on allocations that will impact gender. How might that look like in practice
09:44for, for children, for example? So it might be very similar. It could be at the budget formulation
09:51stage that the government themselves, when they come up with line by line the items, they try to tag it
09:56to
09:56see, like, this is a child sensitive, child responsive budgeting, whether, and how to apportion it.
10:01For example, I think one thing we struggle with is with social workforce, but they are not all
10:06addressing children, because they could be elderly, they could be the other segment of populations,
10:11but how do we wish job titles are relevant to child protection, and what is the percentage can we
10:17tag on to these positions to say that they are contributing towards child protection agendas,
10:22and then to calculate them all together to see, this is how much government is spending on child
10:26protection, and try to maybe correlate it with outcomes to see, have we improved on outcomes from
10:32that front. Is it because we have such fragmented areas of protection for children, social welfare,
10:40and the like, that it makes it really difficult to see where or what is impacting children? Or is that
10:48just,
10:48you know, just paperwork actually can be can be resolved?
10:54I say yes and no. I mean, on one front, we do want to encourage the government that there's this
10:59thing,
10:59this framework called, I think, classification of the functions of the government that other
11:04countries adopt. For example, what's considered social protection. So, if we follow other countries to
11:10adopt this, it's easier for us to benchmark to other countries, to see how much are we spending on social
11:15protection? How much other people are spending on social protection? Whether are we on par or not on
11:18par with our peers, for example. So, that is why, and I think the other thing is also,
11:24now, there are a lot of bills being mentioned in the budget event. For example, the Online Safety Act,
11:29for example, the Social Work Profession Bill that was passed this year, Anti-Booling Bill,
11:35but there isn't a number that's attached to it. How much is the government budgeted for these bills?
11:41Ideally, we want big action plans to be costed and they're being tracked, not just progress, but also
11:47the expenditure part of it. Yes, and the impact as well, right? Measuring the impact, which I'm sure
11:52is quite tricky, but we don't do enough of that in Malaysia to see whether that money that's being
11:58spent is actually being spent well and being spent on the right things. Yes. Maybe just an example here,
12:05and here it's not on child protection, though one thing we do see in child protection is we could identify,
12:11for example, how much is going to child homes, the Rumakanakana, but we're not seeing how much is
12:17going to keeping families together. So, we know it's best for children to be with a family and we know
12:22the government is doing. We know there's foster care, kinship care, social workers, but we could not
12:27trace it and track it. So, I think more visibility in the budget lines would help us see, for example,
12:33how much goes to prevention and how much goes to response. But maybe to your question on good
12:40practices when we cause spills, some countries have realized that child poverty, because child
12:45poverty tends to be higher than overall poverty, is a global phenomenon and we see the same in Malaysia.
12:51So, New Zealand, Ireland, for example, on Budget Day, the Minister of Finance brings a child budget
12:59and within that child budget they show improvements in this particular case on child poverty, but also,
13:05let's say, multidimensional areas, you know, like health and well-being and how the budget is responding
13:11to the needs and how the budget has delivered in those outcomes that have become, let's say,
13:18a priority for the country. Other countries in Latin America, Peru, Chile, Colombia, for example,
13:24they do tag the lines and they're able to say, okay, this is how much is going for children and
13:29this
13:29is how, you know, the outcomes are faring. So, it can be done and it shows, let's say, prioritization
13:36of children within policy. Oh, I love that so much to have actually a budget dedicated for that. We often,
13:44I guess, maybe don't think about how our public investment impacts. We say we do it for the children,
13:48but we want to see how that money is being spent for their future, for their current well-being as
13:53well.
13:54Can I, since you brought up social assistance, can I talk a little bit about the expansion of the
14:00SARA, the SEIB, the Sumbangan Asas Rahma Program, as well as the Sumbangan Tunai Rahma Program.
14:07When we think about how much is expanded, wonderful news, many Malaysians, I think, were very happy about
14:12that. But how has it been in terms of the impact of it? Are cash transfers, are targeted assistance
14:20effective in reducing child poverty? I know this is something that UNICEF looks at quite closely.
14:26I think, in principle, yes, but it depends on the design. And this is where I think we can impact
14:31this a little bit more. As I said at the beginning, one of the biggest wins, I believe, for families
14:37in the budget 2027 is the expansion of SARA to all STR recipients. This is now covering about 9 million
14:44households, and our estimates show that it's about 50 percent of Malaysian children are covered under
14:50STR and SARA. We also applaud the strengthening of the program to help families make healthier choices.
14:57So now, for example, you can use SARA on the Pasar Fama. You can buy fresh fruits and vegetables,
15:04you know, instead of, let's say, only not necessarily the healthiest options. So we see that as a really
15:12positive impact, not only on coverage, but also on how you can use the credits, as well as the expansion
15:17of outlets to more remote and hard to reach areas. But we do feel that there could be other things
15:23that
15:24could be done in future iterations to make SARA and STR much more responsive to the needs of children.
15:30So, as mentioned, child poverty tends to be much higher than poverty, and some of the internal calculations
15:37we've done show that in Malaysia, poverty rate among households with children is about five times higher
15:43than the rate of households without children. So poverty seems to be more of a
15:51households with children type of issue. Why do you think that is, Juanita?
15:54There could be multiple things. One, of course, is you have increased expenses. Raising children
16:02is costly. It's expensive. But also what you need to provide to them for them to reach their full
16:09potential becomes higher. But also, we do see that in many cases, the birth of a child comes with the
16:17loss of a breadwinner. Many women are staying home and where they're saying, okay, the main reason why
16:23many women are not working is because of care and household-related responsibilities. So we have,
16:29let's say, a shock of increased expenses and a shock of decreased income.
16:34Wow.
16:36And we see that families with children did not recover after COVID. Families without children,
16:42their poverty rates have gone down and the policies have been really successful.
16:46But those that have children are kind of stagnant in the pre-COVID poverty levels,
16:52which is worrying. But Malaysia has shown that its poverty-reducing policies are working
16:57when they are really focused on targeting the right, let's say, population. The next step would be,
17:03let's focus on families with children. And SDR and SARA could be an excellent way to do this.
17:08Right now, our calculations show that the per capita benefit is higher for those without children.
17:16I see.
17:16Let's say, when you take the amount, even though SDR does give you a bit more,
17:21if children are in the households, it doesn't compensate.
17:26That's so interesting. So this is what you mean by the design of the assistance program.
17:32Can we just explore that a bit more? I'm so curious to know, how do we design,
17:37or how would you like to see policymakers design or redesign SARA, SDR, to help families with
17:45children close this gap, maybe exit poverty or children poverty?
17:52One way, I mean, right now, SDR and SARA are targeting households. When you look within the household,
17:59you could say, okay, for each child, there could be a top-up. And that top-up could be,
18:04for example, also for SARA. SDR has a top-up. It doesn't compensate.
18:09Not enough, you mean?
18:10Not enough. You still have per capita lower levels for those without children. But SARA is,
18:16let's say, a lump sum amount for the household. You could have, let's say, an extra SARA benefit for
18:21each of the children, taking into account their needs. And this could be even further expanded when
18:27the child has a disability. Raising a child with a disability is even costlier because you need
18:33access to further services. So you could design it in a way that it would be responsive to the needs
18:38of children, also across the life cycle. So let's say, at the beginning, children are not in school.
18:45They're not receiving the school meals. So you might need an increased investment. But in
18:48adolescence, they might need more. You know, they might need to, you know, expand in their sports,
18:55afternoon activities, a few other things. So you could trace the child and the needs of the child
18:59and adjust that amount. So an additional way would be, let's say, SARA Madani. It goes to all adults.
19:07Yes. What if it goes to children? All children. So I think there could be innovative ways of,
19:13you know, targeting children. And here I do use the word targeting because we're targeting, say,
19:20a moment in life that is vulnerable. And so if you target all children, you're covering that part of
19:27the vulnerability through, let's say, differently designed ways of... Oh, I really like that. Did you
19:33have anything to add on that, Yunyi? No, maybe I wanted to add that I think one thing that we
19:38have
19:38been trying to talk about, an idea was the social protection flaw for everyone by the different
19:44more vulnerability points in their life. So children, when they're not earning income, pregnant
19:50mothers, and then when people have disability and at old age. And I think that's one idea. And I think
19:55the other point about SARA and STR is I think ideally, so even for children, we have now the Bantuan
20:01Awal Persekolahan as well. Yes, yes. That amount has been increased. But the thing is, it's one of,
20:06ideally, we would like it to be a monthly thing that families can expect. This is a monthly thing that
20:12can go towards the child nutrition, the child's learning and... Oh, that's one way to make sure
20:16you're targeting children within households in that specific period of the time. You raised the issue
20:23of when a child has a disability, so children with disabilities. Now, I wonder about children who
20:28might not be visible or have access to some of the allocations in Budget 2027. Children with disabilities,
20:35children from, I guess, remote areas, indigenous communities, stateless children, undocumented
20:40children, refugees. Can you talk a little bit about that? These are the children that I'm worried
20:45might fall through the gaps of our social safety net. How do you think that we might be able to
20:53stop
20:53them from or at least protect them so we don't leave anyone behind? Thanks for this question. I think
20:58it's quite relevant. We do see that the budget increased the allowance for children with disabilities
21:03that are registered with JKM and are attending, let's say, an education or a school. And we saw also
21:09increased incentives for teachers who are teaching children with disabilities and increased attention
21:15to enhancing access to services for children with autism and Down syndrome. And this is great.
21:21But where we see, for example, the measurement of success could be whether these children are
21:28successfully integrated into the education system or like mainstream communities. So, for example,
21:34instead of specialized routes, let's say, for autism or Down syndrome, you know, it's making that money
21:41or turning that money into training teachers and making schools, mainstream schools accessible so that
21:48they can include children with disabilities. It's much more cost effective. Otherwise, you would need,
21:53let's say, a stream for each type of disability. But it also reflects the world that they will live in
21:59as
21:59adults. You know, they will be living in communities and workplaces where you have people of all
22:05abilities. Yeah, you don't want to isolate them, right? Exactly. And maybe one area where we have not
22:10yet seen in the budget or at least from the from the from the speech and what was tabled is
22:16an increased
22:16investment in early identification and intervention. So this is where we are catching, diagnosing and really
22:24seeing whether the child has a disability quite early on. The earlier we act, the easier it is to provide
22:31intervention that helps or enables children to participate in mainstream education. Malaysia has
22:37really good models. Sarawak has invested in the one stop early intervention centers. We're helping and
22:45we're supporting an evaluation and we're really seeing increased impacts already on cognitive development
22:50as well as family. So there is already, let's say, a model and the budget could then go to support
22:57these earlier programs. On undocumented refugee and stateless children, unfortunately, we, they're not
23:09captured in the budget. They're not eligible for the services that are provided under the budget and they
23:15remain vulnerable to exploitation and abuse. And it's a lost opportunity as they could contribute later on to
23:24economic growth, especially in the moment of demographic change. Definitely, I agree with you. In the time that we
23:31have left, I've lost track of time to say. In the time that we have left, I do want to
23:35ask you, I appreciate the work that
23:38you've done looking at the current budget and the previous budgets to track some of the how much money public
23:44investment has
23:44gone into this. But from your work, what is it that you would like to see being prioritised to be
23:52addressed?
23:53So when we think about the areas that have been historically underfunded for children, what would you
23:59like to see corrected? And I would also include in this question, what kind of data would you like to
24:05see
24:05being published around children-related expenditure? Let me begin with you.
24:12Well, I guess for us, what's obvious is investment in the early years, education and development.
24:17So that's one. The other thing that we really want to talk about was I think
24:21what we didn't see is that sometimes what's being originally budgeted doesn't end up being spent.
24:26And we do see that there's a big variation. I mean, to us, I mean, of course, we always want
24:30more
24:30funding and more funding for children. But maybe we will first look into what's being budgeted. Are they
24:34being spent? Are they being, you know, safeguarded and not being taken away by other priorities and
24:39being spent properly? That's the other one. Yeah.
24:43Okay. Wanita.
24:45Maybe what I would like to see is more integration between services, which actually gives you a better
24:51value for money. And one example that we're trialing in Kuala Lumpur, it's called ASU KL.
24:57So this program integrates 150 ringgit for every child that lives in a PPR flat in KL zero to five
25:06with parenting and nutrition support. So when we bring these together, we're tackling poverty,
25:12let's say when it comes to the money and what it takes to buy healthy food. But we're also teaching
25:18parents and enabling parents to make better decisions for children. So this integration gives
25:24you much more on the nutrition intervention as well as the cash intervention, not only for poverty,
25:30but for example, for stunting. Just one year into the program, we're already seeing decreased hunger,
25:37decreased underweight and an increase in the diversity of foods that parents are giving children.
25:43We hope to see later when all the budget lines are shown, the continuation of such these programs,
25:50because this could, for example, be precursors on how SARA could then be enhanced. For example,
25:56that every SARA beneficiary then gets, let's say, parenting support on how to use the SARA benefit.
26:02So these are just small models that have huge potential for cost effectiveness and impact.
26:08There's so much potential to be scaled up. I would say thank you both for coming on the show and
26:13highlighting such an important area of the way or the lens that we need to put on our budgets going
26:19forward. I appreciate your time. Thank you both Yindi and Juanita. That's all the time we have for you on
26:24this episode of Consider This. I'm Melissa Idris signing off for the evening. Thank you so much for
26:28watching and good night.