They told the forum in capital city Kuala Lumpur that Malay supremacist leaders' allegations that vernacular schools cause disunity had no basis and was not backed by evidence.
Policy analyst Dr Lim Teck Ghee said the Barisan Nasional (BN) government – which some of these politicians are a part of – had made it clear that there was no evidence that mother-tongue education caused communal disunity.
“There is also no proof that Sekolah Kebangsaan (national schools) foster unity,” said Lim at a forum titled “Should there be one stream of schooling in Malaysia?”
“These people have no evidence to back up their arguments. In reality, there is no evidence that our vernacular school system causes disunity."
Primary schooling is compulsory in Malaysia with schools using Bahasa Malaysia, Mandarin or Tamil as the medium of instruction but of late, private schools are mushrooming with a focus on English as the language of choice.
What is more ironic is that when it comes to disunity among students, the Najib administration may have made matters worse, said Lim of the Centre for Policy Initiatives (CPI).
This is because according to the National Education Blueprint (NEB), the administration had cut funding to a primary school programme meant to foster intercommunal ties between children of different school types, he said.
The forum was organised to discuss the debate over whether vernacular schools caused disunity. The claims were recently made by Malay supremacist groups and Umno politicians.
The latter are asking the government to get rid of the vernacular school system as they claim it causes a rift between Malaysia’s three biggest communities – the Indians, Chinese and Malays.
They believe that all students should be forced into a single-stream school.
Lim said it was logistically impossible to get rid of the about 1,300 semi-national Chinese SJK(C) and Tamil SJK(T) primary schools which currently have 700,000 pupils.
“The authors of the NEB themselves say that the diversity in our school systems is an advantage and they have even called on the government to support them.”
When it comes to fostering unity between different students, the NEB wants the government to expand RIMUP (Pupils Integration Plan for Unity) programmes on all school, said Lim.
Instead, funding for RIMUP programmes have steadily gone down since 2007 when it was first launched. In that year RIMUP received RM25.4 million but in 2011, it only received RM2.4 billion, he said.
Another speaker, Wan Saiful Wan Jan of the Institute for Democracy and Economic Affairs (Ideas), pointed out that the politicians agitating against communal disunity are themselves from ethic-based parties.
“There is this hypocrisy when it comes to the subject of disunity. And they blame our schools,” said Wan Saiful who is CEO of the Ideas think tank.
The entire school system, however, should be revamped, he said, to put more choices in the hands of parents on what schools they want their children to go to.
The current system, he said, was based on an old Prussian Empire model from 1806 which was more suited to creating obedient soldiers and workers instead of critical thinkers.
“The system should be decentralised and depoliticised,” he said.
Instead of funding schools, the funds should go to each individual student and parents can choose which schools to send them to, Wan Saiful said.
According to this model, the government would set minimum standards of academic excellence and maintain public examinations. But schools would have to compete to get students.
“At the end of the day, parents would choose quality. Then the debate over this type of school does not get funding or that one gets too much would be over.”
Such a system would also create a wide variety of choices for students to learn in their own mother tongue, which is the most effective way for children to absorb knowledge.
This was echoed by K. Arumugam, an adviser for the Tamil foundation, a group that supports Tamil primary education.
According to a study done by local academics, poor Tamil children who had gone to a national school where the medium of instruction is Malay did worse than those who went to Tamil primary schools.
“This is why we were against the policy of Teaching Science and Maths in English. This is because it is quicker to pick up scientific and mathematical concepts in your mother tongue,” said Arumugam.
Schools, the speakers collectively argued, were being made into scapegoats for the problem of communal friction when in reality it was due to government policies that privileged one ethnic community over another.
For instance, Arumugam said, the focus on Bumiputera-only tertiary institutions such as Universiti Teknologi Mara came at the expense of places for non-Bumiputera at public universities.
“UITM is increasingly becoming the place where the Bumiputera go to earn their diplomas and degrees. But non-Malays have to fight for limited places in public universities.”
Lim of the CPI said that vernacular schools received less funding than national schools despite the government’s commitment to them.
“There is discrepancy between how much the government says it gives and the actual data.
“There is widespread public perception that the SJKs continue to be discriminated and treated as step children by the government.” – November 12, 2014.
- See more at: http://www.themalaysianinsider.com/malaysia/article/vernacular-education-a-political-football-for-those-seeking-fame-say-expert#sthash.gOAAj28N.dpuf
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