By Leslie Lim
Ever since the mid-1980s boom, Kuala Lumpur’s landscape and skyline have shifted dramatically. Mega projects took root, expressways sliced across the Klang Valley, and corporate towers sprouted where modest neighbourhoods once stood.
While that multi-decade boom built a modern city, it also set off an unintended domino effect: central residential communities systematically shrank as commercial districts expanded, triggering a profound shift in urban demographics.
Decades later, that spatial transformation has created a glaring civic mismatch. It is reflected in the Ministry of Education’s January update on under-enrolled schools, with 3,164 schools nationwide — national and vernacular alike — recording fewer than 150 students each as of November 2025. They are called SKMs – Sekolah Kurang Murid! There was one school in Segamat, Johor with only five pupils!
Mention those numbers, and the rakyat conversation instinctively turns to rural-to-urban migration, leaving many kampung and former estate schools with dwindling enrolments. But the same demographic shift has also affected schools in urban areas, where established residential neighbourhoods have been transformed by urban redevelopment and suburban migration.
The heart of KL is not spared.
Decades of commercial redevelopment and changing residential patterns have hollowed out older pockets such as Pudu, Brickfields, Sentul or Chow Kit. Some inner-city primary schools, including historic mission schools, now operate with very small enrolments.
Families packed up and moved to expanding suburban townships in Subang, Puchong, Cheras, Selayang and beyond.
Sought-after secondary institutions such as St John’s Institution and Victoria Institution managed to survive the shift. Their strategic locations, legacy and prestige allow them to draw students from across the Klang Valley.
But humble neighbourhood primary schools, however, depend largely on their immediate catchments. As families moved out, classrooms in the capital’s core quietly emptied.
In this regard, Putrajaya has to consider pressing priorities — consolidating small classes to relocating schools. Many will remember the high-profile relocation of Bukit Bintang Girls’ School in 2000, which paved the way for Pavilion Kuala Lumpur.
Yet there is another question worth asking: what should happen to public school infrastructure when its original purpose is no longer fully justified by the surrounding population? Millions of ringgit worth of public infrastructure sit on some of KL’s most valuable real estate. Allowing such assets to remain underutilised indefinitely makes little economic or social sense.
Instead, there is a pragmatic option worth exploring: repurposing underutilised school blocks into public multi-generational hubs, combining government-approved daycare, preschools and senior citizen day centres. This is hardly a wild experiment.
Across Asia, governments are adapting public infrastructure to changing demographics. Singapore has developed large-scale childcare centres to ease the burden on working parents, while Japan and South Korea have repurposed surplus or closed school infrastructure for community, welfare and other uses.
The practical benefits for KL are obvious. Placing affordable early-childhood care along established neighbourhood could provide working parents with a much-needed lifeline as childcare costs rise.
The financial relief could be significant for families with more than three children and perhaps even more tangible than the savings many experience from BUDI95 fuel subsidies.
At the other end of the demographic spectrum, Malaysia is also moving towards an ageing society. The country is expected to attain ageing-nation status by 2030, when those aged 60 and above are projected to account for more than 15 per cent of the population.
That transition demands more than hospitals and nursing homes. We will need accessible, structured community spaces where older Malaysians can spend their days safely, actively and with dignity.
What better place to start than underused classroom blocks sitting in established urban neighbourhoods? The boom that began in the mid-1980s permanently altered KL’s residential map. But public assets should not be left stranded simply because the demographics around them have changed.
Turning empty classrooms into active multi-generational spaces would preserve valuable public land while addressing two growing pressures on urban families: affordable childcare and an ageing population. It is not about preserving every school at all costs. Nor is it about turning schools into commercial property. It is about making better use of public assets that already exist.
Simple, cost-effective, pragmatic common sense and perhaps long overdue.
WE