KOTA KINABALU, March 1 -- On the outskirts of the city here, children could be seen happily milling about in their uniforms in a building that for all intents and purposes is a school.

However, this place is different from a public school barely a kilometre away - which is equipped with multi-level classrooms, labs, and a field. In fact, the public school is off limits to these children.

Lacking proper identification documents, these children are stateless and are therefore unable to attend public schools.

So they attend Etania - one of the several hundreds of educational institutions known as alternative learning centres (ALC) - filling this educational gap for tens of thousands of children of migrant families, living in the shadows w...