Below is the written answer by Ministry of Education to my Dewan Rakyat question on the number of students by ethnicity who are studying at Chinese primary schools in Malaysia.
I am pleasantly surprised at the high number of Bumiputera students, i.e. there 55,976 (9.15%) Bumiputera students out of the total 612,064 students. This goes to show that the high demand for Chinese primary schools is not only from the Chinese community but increasingly from the Bumiputeras as well.
Furthermore, the 55,976 (9.15%) number of students does not include students of Indian background who also attend Chinese schools.
By simple reasoning, if each school should ideally accommodate a student population of 2,000 students, therefore a total of 28 primary schools would be required to meet this demand.
Therefore, I urge the Ministry of Education to seriously look into this real and documented public demand for Chinese vernacular schools, and ensure that adequate schools, teachers and education facilities are provided without fear or favour.
Dear YB, part of the reason why some malays are sending the kids to chinese schools could be bcos many of the national schools’ teachers are not doing their job(always murid buat kerja sendiri or just disappear), it’s NOT that the chinese schools systems are so much superior.An overhaul of both chinese and national school syllabus matching Spore/Japan should be introduced asap to move our country to next level.
i strongly suggest these chinese and tamil medium schools do more on attracting the other races into their schools..
You know why ?
Because these are the so called Bumi who know that very soon the Chinese is the language that the world will use and not Bahasa Melayu.
Thank u sassy YB.
At last this replied data was obtained, a few months back when the question was asked by reporters to the education ministry and other civil service depts, evasive replies were given varied from no data was available to classified info.
It is very interesting data; giving answers to many curious thoughts i.e. (1) It debunks the divisive BN policy of divide and rule, the ordinary bumiputra rakyat wants to acquire mandarin language for assimilation into mainstream economic society. (2)The mainstream Malay community wants to co- exits to compete on a level playing field, the selangor state figure speaks for itself 4863 or 24% (3)East Malaysian figures of 36% bumi attendance reflect a strong desire to move forward economically from the various native bumis. (4) Johor state being a BN stronghold bastion and being next door to S’pore, the data shows the trading language to be used will be universal, besides the English language, in view of China rising economic power.
The national figures of 9.15% will increase due to the popular need of this would be universal trading language. The rest of the world is also trying to acquire the Chinese language, especially the EU countries for economic reasons. This in turn will add pressure on space availability in these underfunded and understaffed schools. As it is now, the problem is already there for the last 22 years.
Merry X’mas and A Changed Year 2011.
James.
It is a fact that if you can’t read mandarin/English, you have only half the world to look at or put it more dramatically you only understand half of the world’s culture!
That probably the main reason why all over the world, parents or individuals have turned a keen interest on both languages.
It is also a question of survival as it is difficult to ignore the economic and political influence of China and United state.
So thumb up to those parents who have the wisdom to realize this. May be our DPM should consider this statistic before it decide on any policy that will destroy our children future in this increasingly globalized world.So far our education policy as put forward by DPM is moving counter clockwise to the aspiration of many forward looking parents.