No time for extra BM lessons

ARCHIVES 2013

By admin-s On Sep 7, 2013

(FMT) – The two schooling sessions in Chinese vernacular schools will not accommodate the extra hours for Bahasa Malaysia.

The Education Ministry’s proposal to tack on extra hours of Bahasa Malaysia classes for vernacular schools has received mixed reaction from independent educational groups.

Dong Zong president Dr Yap Sin Tian asked how prolonging school hours would be possible, given that most Chinese schools have two schooling sessions.

“Right now, Chinese schools are already running on the maximum amount of hours possible. When a school session ends at 1pm, another session starts immediately.

“So if the government wants to propose this, it is impossible to implement now. You cannot allocate more time,” Yap told FMT.

He said the government should look into constructing more Chinese schools before implementing such a proposal.

Education Minister Muhyiddin Yassin had acknowledged the issue of two schooling sessions this morning, and said this was why the government would study the proposal thoroughly before implementation.

“We will implement it through several phases. It won’t be at once. We will find the way to accommodate students and teachers, as well as parents,” he said, when unveiling the National Education Blueprint 2013-2015 this morning.

Meanwhile, Tamil Foundation president S Pasupathy welcomed the proposal, saying that the NGO believed improving Bahasa Malaysia among vernacular school students was a noble cause.

“If the government wants to add school hours, we are perfectly okay with that. Just don’t add Bahasa Malaysia classes at the expense of mother tongue classes,” he told FMT.

He said the schools’ greatest fear was that mother tongue classes were shortened to accommodate the Bahasa Malaysia classes, as was the case when the now-abandoned English for Science and Maths policy was introduced.