There has been much debate about teaching of Science and Mathematics in English. The Ministry of Education has been contemplating whether to revert back the teaching to Malay (for National schools) and the respective mother tongue (for Chinese and Tamil schools) or continue to use English as the medium of instruction for these two subjects.
The Year Six examination (UPSR) 2008 is the first cohort of students who were taught Science and Mathematics since their first year of formal schooling and their performance in this major examination will determine the fate of the entire Malaysian education system. This morning, Director-General of Education has finally announced the long-awaited results.
I wish to share two of my observations about this issue.
Firstly, it is rather surprising that the government will want to evaluate and make a decision with just one cohort of students. Statistically, isn't this a little too small a sample for evaluation? Although the policy had been implemented for six years, nonetheless, one needs to remember that education policy is always a long-term project and the effect might take years to be fully observable. Because of this, I recalled in one of the philosophy of education discourses that politicians should never get involve in education policy-making as they will usually not able to survive their "short" political lifespan in order to see the effects take place, thus resulting in many short-term and inefficient policies being made for the sake of personal legacy. I really think that this policy might takes another five to ten years before the effect is fully comprehensible. After all, it took about two generations of Malaysians to fully see the devastating effect of changing the language focus from English to Malay in the late 1960s.
Secondly, another startling observation is the students' preferred language used in the UPSR examination. If I understand correctly, the examination questions are bi-lingual (either English-Malay, English-Chinese or English-Tamil depending of the type of schools). The contrasting percentages have an interesting story to tell. Quoting from The Star newspaper (December 16, 2008), in Tamil schools, 62.76% of students answered in English for Science and 89.11% for Mathematics, while in Chinese schools, only 2.86% answered in English for Science and 1.29% for Mathematics. There were no statistics reported for the National schools (or the students might not have the bi-lingual option).
The interesting story here is why such a low percentage of students in Chinese schools used English in answering their Science and Mathematics papers as compared to the Indians. To me, these statistics point towards a more serious problem, which is what has been taking place in the schools for the past six years. Such a low percentage of usage in English language in Chinese schools could be due to the reluctant of teachers and educators in seriously implementing the policy and thus the students are not fully expose to the English language in learning Science and Mathematics.
Therefore, the evaluation at this point of time with this one cohort is not the effectiveness of learning, but rather, the effectiveness in implementing the policy. With the biggest critics of the policy coming from the Chinese communities, the startling statistics truly reaffirmed that much of the debate is not about the medium of instruction but rather the mindset.
This post is also available in The Malaysian Education Debate
The Year Six examination (UPSR) 2008 is the first cohort of students who were taught Science and Mathematics since their first year of formal schooling and their performance in this major examination will determine the fate of the entire Malaysian education system. This morning, Director-General of Education has finally announced the long-awaited results.
I wish to share two of my observations about this issue.
Firstly, it is rather surprising that the government will want to evaluate and make a decision with just one cohort of students. Statistically, isn't this a little too small a sample for evaluation? Although the policy had been implemented for six years, nonetheless, one needs to remember that education policy is always a long-term project and the effect might take years to be fully observable. Because of this, I recalled in one of the philosophy of education discourses that politicians should never get involve in education policy-making as they will usually not able to survive their "short" political lifespan in order to see the effects take place, thus resulting in many short-term and inefficient policies being made for the sake of personal legacy. I really think that this policy might takes another five to ten years before the effect is fully comprehensible. After all, it took about two generations of Malaysians to fully see the devastating effect of changing the language focus from English to Malay in the late 1960s.
Secondly, another startling observation is the students' preferred language used in the UPSR examination. If I understand correctly, the examination questions are bi-lingual (either English-Malay, English-Chinese or English-Tamil depending of the type of schools). The contrasting percentages have an interesting story to tell. Quoting from The Star newspaper (December 16, 2008), in Tamil schools, 62.76% of students answered in English for Science and 89.11% for Mathematics, while in Chinese schools, only 2.86% answered in English for Science and 1.29% for Mathematics. There were no statistics reported for the National schools (or the students might not have the bi-lingual option).
The interesting story here is why such a low percentage of students in Chinese schools used English in answering their Science and Mathematics papers as compared to the Indians. To me, these statistics point towards a more serious problem, which is what has been taking place in the schools for the past six years. Such a low percentage of usage in English language in Chinese schools could be due to the reluctant of teachers and educators in seriously implementing the policy and thus the students are not fully expose to the English language in learning Science and Mathematics.
Therefore, the evaluation at this point of time with this one cohort is not the effectiveness of learning, but rather, the effectiveness in implementing the policy. With the biggest critics of the policy coming from the Chinese communities, the startling statistics truly reaffirmed that much of the debate is not about the medium of instruction but rather the mindset.
This post is also available in The Malaysian Education Debate
