ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses key issues related to the academic underperformance of Malaysian Indian secondary school students from vernacular Tamil primary school background as well as national-medium primary schools. It adopts Ogbu’s Cultural-Ecological Model of education of ethnic minority communities to examine the complex, interlocking issues of historical, economic and social constraints as well as students’ proficiency in the national language and English, teachers’ attitudes and weaknesses in the transition Remove class and how they affect the Indian students’ motivation to perform at the secondary level of education. It proposes an alternative and radically different model of state-sponsored priority residential secondary schools to improve the performance of the Indian students.
