Pondok students to get wider pathways into mainstream, higher education

PONDOK students should be given greater opportunities to continue into mainstream and higher education while retaining their traditional Islamic studies, Prime Minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim has said.

He said strengthening the pondok education system should not mean students remained confined to traditional fields, but should give them the educational exposure needed to pursue further studies within the wider public education system.

“Otherwise, there will be two. One is the pondok, traditional stream, and the other is this stream, and there will be a clash between the two disciplines,” he said when speaking at the 2026 National Muzakarah Ulama Turath in Putrajaya today.

Pondok schools are a traditional form of Islamic religious education in Malaysia, historically centred on a religious teacher, with students studying Islamic texts and subjects while often living in accommodation around the teacher’s home or place of study.

The term “pondok” refers to the small huts or lodging traditionally provided for students.

Anwar said the strategy was to strengthen pondok education up to the highest level while ensuring students had a foundation that would allow them to enter the public and mainstream education system.

He said university should not necessarily be the destination for every pondok student, but the pathway should be available to those who wanted to pursue higher education.

The approach, he said, would help ensure pondok education remained connected to developments in contemporary education instead of becoming isolated from the wider system.

“Government also encourages experts and relevant parties to continue efforts to formulate a suitable form of education to strengthen pondok institutions,” he said.

Anwar said the government would provide assistance within its capacity to ensure efforts to strengthen the system were implemented gradually and with a clear direction.

He said the government was also prepared to help select several pondok schools as pilot institutions to introduce new fields of learning and specialisations based on the manhaj tarbiyah and discipline proposed by ulama.

“What has been proposed here, which I have accepted, is for the government to help immediately by selecting several pondok institutions that can begin this new tradition of learning proposed here and specialise based on the manhaj tarbiyah and discipline,” he said. - September 19, 2026