Tracing autonomy: Sarawak’s educational governance from the Brooke era to MA63

The renewed focus on fulfilling the demands of the Malaysia Agreement 1963 (MA63) began when Pakatan Harapan formed the government in 2018, which was then continued to be pursued under the Unity Government led by Dato Sri Anwar Ibrahim, established after the 15th General Election in November of 2022, with the issue first raised in March 2023 during the MA63 Technical Committee Meeting. In line with this development, the state of Sarawak emerged as a leader in education autonomy. This article contends that the historical evolution of Sarawak’s education system has been instrumental in shaping the state’s pursuit of both autonomy and cohesion, ultimately determining how federal Ministry of Education policies are adapted and implemented within the framework of a highly centralized federation. By going through document analysis and analyzing them through a multifaceted theoretical framework—institutional memory, political order and decay, legibility, and dynamic federalism —the study reveals that Sarawak’s current assertion of educational autonomy is rooted in a long historical trajectory marked by institutional continuity, elite socialisation, and embedded governance norms dating back to the Brooke era and constitutional safeguards in 1963 as well as the selective application of autonomy under the Malaysia Agreement 1963 which creates an asymmetrical federal arrangement, where Sarawak exercises conditional education governance rather than full policy-making authority.