Marginalising Vernacular Schools

As reported by Malaysiakini here, the Chinese education movement Dong Jiao Zong (DJZ) or United School Committees Association, produced a report "in response to a call for feedback on the blueprint by the education ministry early this year."

I'd like to state upfront that the following views are those of my own, and not necessarily that of the political party which I'm affiliated to. There are points raised in the report which I'm in full agreement with, while there are others, which I thought were unreasonable.

First, the points which I'm in general agreement with:

1. More funds for vernacular schools

DJZ president Yap Sin Tian said the blueprint “continues to ignore vernacular schools”

From 1970-2006, DJZ estimated that the country saw an increase of 2,900 national schools. A total of 193 vernacular schools - 58 Chinese schools and 134 Tamil - were closed for various reasons.

DJZ insisted that there is demand for 134 Chinese schools nationwide. Currently, there are 1,810 vernacular schools, 205 of which are run without government aid. DJZ alleged that the government has spent more money on national schools and has marginalised vernacular schools.

As expressed extensively in my artictle "National vs Vernacular Schools", the BN government has persisted in ignoring the needs of vernacular schools in the country.

...despite the consistent claim by the government that it will build more vernacular schools in accordance to the needs of the people, the number of Chinese primary schools have declined from 1,333 in 1957 to 1,288 today while enrolment has more than doubled from 310,000 to 636,000. At the same time, the number of Tamil primary schools has been reduced from 526 in 2001 to 523 in 2006 despite a 12.7% increase in enrolment from 88,810 in 2001 to 100,142 in 2006.

The perception of being marginalised cannot be help when The government's disbursement of RM1.4 million to 248 Chinese primary schools, or a meagre RM6,000 per school as hyped by Deputy Education Minister Datuk Hon Choon Kim in the vernacular press, pales in comparison to the RM709 million allocated to building 15 new Mara Junior Science Colleges (MRSMs), and more for upgrades and repairs of existing MRSMs.

2. Greater Transparency & Accountability

DJZ also wants greater transparency in the disbursement of funds... [including] listing subsidies for all schools.

By listing the relevant expenses and disbursements to all schools, both the interested parties as well as the rakyat can decide for themselves if the government has been equitable in their distribution.

3. A call for more dialogue with the Ministry of Education

...the United Chinese School Teachers Association (Jiao Zong) president Ong Chiew Chuen said that "the ministry should initiate open dialogues with associations."

It is actually quite unfortunate that the National Education Blueprint 2006-2010 launched by the Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Hussein, had not taken into account the views of the various communities and associations representing the education sector, which falls under the purview of the Ministry.

As the Minister himself represented earlier, he has admitted in an exclusive interview with Nanyang Siangpau that “people should not regard the various types of schools in the country as a hurdle to be cleared. After all, this is not a zero-sum game because multi-culturalism is an added advantage and a strength for the country.”

Hence, we hope that he makes good his promise to receive feedback in good faith from all channels, including those via blogs.

On the point of disagreement with DJZ report, I find that the DJZ President, Yap Sin Tian's concern over the fact that Chinese and Tamil languages have been added as subjects in Malay- medium schools.

“It’s as though there is a move by the government to prioritise Malay-medium schools and phase out vernacular schools,” he said.

Selecting a school for one's children is a matter of choice and certainly, "competition" in terms of offering options and improving the quality of education between different streams is a move which should be encouraged. I've written on my views which are supportive of offering mother tongue languages in national schools. Instead is the much delayed implementation of the programme, despite it being a key objective of the new Blueprint should be subject to criticism.

The availability of mother tongue education is only one of the factors affecting the parents decision to enrol students into national or vernacular schools. Two other overwhelming factors are the actual quality of education delivered as well as the perceived religiousification of the national schools.

If both streams of education seek to compete to provide better quality education in a 'secular' environment for non-Muslims, then the ultimate beneficiaries will be our future young Malaysians. Hence healthy competition should definitely not be obstructed. ;)

Why Jiao Zong rejects ranking of Smart Schools

I was slightly irritated when I read in the Star yesterday that "Jiao Zong (United Chinese School Teachers Association of Malaysia) chairman Ong Chiow Chuen was quoted in the Sin Chew Daily as saying that the move would have a negative effect." This 'move' is in reference to the decision by the Ministry of Education (MOE) to implement a 5 star rating system for smart schools. I am fully supportive of moves by the MOE to release more information to the public at large which I think will create more transparency and accountability on the part of the school administrators as well as the Ministry. But why did Jiao Zong's chairman reject this ranking system?

First of all, I'm not even sure if there are any Chinese medium schools in the smart school project. A cursory examination of the list of smart schools show that these are all secondary schools and none of them could be considered, as far as I can tell, 'Chinese' national secondary schools in the sense that Catholic High in PJ is a 'Chinese' national secondary school i.e. most of the students are Chinese students from SRJK(C) primary schools and who take Chinese as a PMR as well as an SPM subject. So, I'm a little bit puzzled as to why Ong would object to the ranking of smart schools.

Secondly, his logic of rejecting the ranking of smart schools fails me. He said: "It would give the public a clear picture on how good or bad a school was and this would prompt parents to use all means to ensure that their children were placed in schools that are highly rated."

Given the fact that smart schools already receive greater funding and attention from the Ministry, wouldn't the demand to go to these schools already be sufficiently high? Also, aren't there current procedures which allocate students based on where they live which precludes the sudden streaming in of a large number of outside students who want to enroll in the best smart schools? Furthermore, aren't there other good schools out there which are not designated as smart schools?

As I'm from PJ, I'll use some PJ examples. I can't imagine that all parents would suddenly want to send their girls to Sri Aman since it is a smart school and it would probably do quite well in the ranking system given the demographic profile of the students who go there as well as their middle class and well educated parents. This is because there are other good schools in PJ such as Assunta and Catholic High.

I have to admit that I haven't read the full Oriental Daily interview with Ong. (If anyone knows of the link, please post it here and I'll read the full interview) So I might be guilty of not fairly judging his statements.

But this I will say and I say this based on a more general impression of Dong Jiao Zhong (Dong Zhong and Jiao Zhong) as organizations - that they are not keen on education reform and that they are not keen on being transparent internally and the basis of this attitude is that these organizations are governed and run by aging men who are conservative by nature. Anything that smacks of change is an affront to the way they like things to be - which is to preserve the status quo and not to have change.

While Dong Jiao Zhong has done a great deal in regards to protecting and raising awareness of the plight of Chinese schools in Malaysia, it has done less well in reforming the state of Chinese education in Malaysia. I will just point to two specific examples. They have failed to address the poor standard of English that is being taught and learned in Chinese primary schools as well as Chinese independent schools. So much so that they could not provide alternative proposals when the Ministry of Education decided to implement the teaching of Science and Math in English across all primary schools including Chinese primary schools. The second example is one which Tony has blogged about before - which is the issue of corruption among headmasters in Chinese schools.

The rejection of ranking schools is symptomatic of the conservative streak within Dong Jiao Zhong, I argue. If this leads to a ranking of Chinese primary schools, for example, it will reveal the myth that all Chinese primary schools are equally good at teaching Science and Math, for example, and perhaps reveal the poor standard of English among students in these schools as well as some of their teachers.

While having school rankings is not a panacea for the state of education in Malaysia, I regard it as a positive and progressive step. The fact that the chairman of Jiao Zhong has rejected this move further cements my impression that Dong Jiao Zhong is reluctant to reform itself and to take progressive steps to improve the state of education among Chinese primary schools as well as independent Chinese secondary schools.