Meeting demands of schools

PUBLIC school must be the school of choice for Malaysians and it must remain free, secular and accessible to all. Scholastic excellence should be its primary focus while matters of language medium, syllabus uniformity and national unity are secondary concerns.

How do we cut the Gordian knot that has bedevilled our education system since independence? We learn from the past and make bold decisions for the future. While the Trust School Programme under Yayasan Amir has offered us a glimpse of the potential for public-private partnerships in public education, this has been the standard operating model for countless “Chinese” schools.

We need to encourage Malaysians to become involved in schools either through the ParentTeacher Association (PTA) or board of governors. We need to return our schools to the community so that Malaysians can be responsible for their public schools and tailor them according to their needs.

At present, Malaysian public schools practise subtractive bilingualism for non-Malay learners. It is not an ideal system but we should not tolerate any attempts to further isolate our children and youths to be educated in a cocoon of monolingualism. Calls to recognise the Unified Examination Certificate (UEC) are counter-productive and wholly unnecessary, considering the fact that anyone can sit for the Malaysian Certificate of Education (SPM) and no public university in Malaysia is using Mandarin or Chinese as its medium of instruction (nor should it). Reform in public education needs to be based on two principles – return our schools to the community and promote bilingual and multilingual education at all levels.

The former involves strengthening the roles of PTAs and school boards, giving schools greater autonomy in handling their affairs including manpower decisions, curriculum management and fundraising. Whether we call them Trust Schools or Charter Schools, the key here is to reduce ministerial bureaucracy and allow teachers the freedom to do their work.

As for the thorny matter of languages, let us follow what was laid down by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (Unesco) as a guide (Unesco, 1999). We must support mother tongue education as it is essential for initial instruction and should be extended to as late a stage as possible.

Ideally, parents should have a choice on whether to begin their child’s formal education in his or her mother tongue. This should be accompanied by an early acquisition of a second language and to develop proficiency in it so that pupils would be able to continue their education in the official and national language. If two languages are used as a medium of instruction at secondary school, a third or international language should also be introduced so that by tertiary or university level, our children would have a working knowledge of at least three languages.

Currently, we are trapped in a system that practises subtractive bilingualism (in which a second language is added at the expense of the first language and culture, which diminish as a consequence).

We should always remember that initial mother tongue education does not imply that Bahasa Malaysia or Bahasa Melayu will cease to be used as a language of instruction down the road. The opposite is true, as the purpose of mother tongue education is to prepare children for learning in a language that they do not speak at home.

Our present system fails to preserve this multilingual strength even though, historically, we have rich traditions that have been kept alive through the Christian missionary schools (English-based) and national-type secondary schools (Mandarin-based).

There is really no reason for us to continue funding, subsidising or supporting private and international schools using public monies. Private and international schools only serve to widen the divide between the haves and have-nots. We must make sure our public education system is accessible, acceptable and adaptable, and the key is to change the way our schools are managed, and who are responsible for them.

We should not compromise on our principles of bilingualism and multilingualism but the priority should always be on scholastic achievement and quality of education. If parents aspire for their children to be taught primarily in English, schools should be empowered to decide if they have the resources to meet these demands.

Establish these community-empowered schools supported by local businesses and big corporations and the students will come. The Education Ministry should focus on standardising tests and setting the curriculum so that it matters little what language of instruction is used.

The salary of teachers and public educators should continue to be funded by the government but allow a system where bonuses are paid for performing schools.

And stop identifying our schools by race; let’s start a path where schools and students matter more than their principals and board of directors. Go back to the drawing board instead of trying to please everyone with a patchwork that compromises or undermines the purpose of our national education system.