No plans to reintroduce English for teaching Science, Maths

KUALA LUMPUR: The Education Ministry has no plans to reintroduce the teaching and learning of Science and Mathematics in English (PPSMI), its minister, Dr Radzi Jidin, said yesterday.

He was responding to a parliamentary question from William Leong (PKR-Selayang) on the reasons behind the (proposed) reintroduction of PPSMI; and the ministry’s plan to improve previous weaknesses.

“For your (Leong) information, the Education Ministry has no intention of reintroducing the PPSMI policy,” he said briefly in a written reply.

PPSMI was first introduced in 2003 during Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad’s first tenure as Prime Minister, but was abolished in 2011.

When Dr Mahathir was appointed as the seventh premier, he said a Cabinet committee had been formed to study the reintroduction of PPSMI, but he said a decision would be made based on the majority opinion of his then Cabinet.

On another matter, Radzi said the ministry is currently finetuning the teaching of Jawi script in vernacular schools.

“The ministry will again finetune the matter related to Jawi script (lessons) holistically,” he said in a parliamentary written reply to Steven Sim (DAP-Bukit Mertajam).

At the moment, Radzi said the government plans on continuing the previous administration’s decision on Aug 14, 2019, to reduce the Jawi script syllabus for Standard 4 pupils to three pages instead of the initial six.

The previous Cabinet had also decided that the lessons would be made optional and only taught if approved by parent-teacher associations, parents, and pupils.

The government initially planned to introduce six pages of Jawi calligraphy lessons in the Year Four Bahasa Malaysia textbooks beginning 2020, but this was met with criticism from Chinese and Tamil education groups.