PARLIAMENT A Professional Circular issued in 1976 states that religious programmes can be held in schools, Second Education Minister Idris Jusoh said today.

The circular also stressed that such programmes should be carried out with consideration to the sensitivities of the various races, Idris said.

"For me, the issue here is not about the question of circular. It is whether we have been sensitive or not with one another.

NONE"Whether we sent a circular or not, it will still happen if we do not respect one another," he said when winding debate on the 2014 Supply Bill for the Education Ministry at the Dewan Rakyat today.

Idris (left) was clarifying on the issue of the cow sacrifice rituals carried out in several schools that raised uneasiness among several parties during the last Hari Raya Haji.

On another issue, Idris admitted that the ministry faced an imbalance between existing teacher posts at state level and the number of applicants who wanted to teach in their state of origin.

Taking the example of Kelantan, he said there were only 24,800 teacher posts in the state but the teachers originating Kelantan were more than 53,000 while in Kedah, there were 29,809 posts while teachers originating from that state was 40,298.

Idris said the ministry would also improve the Caring Teacher programme, where teachers would take problematic students as their adopted children as an effort to curb social ills among school students.

On another matter, he said there were 82,710 foreign students in the country and this showed local higher institutions of learning were of quality.

He said Malaysia was placed ninth among countries with the highest number of foreign students in the world.

- Bernama