MINISTRY OF EDUCATION

In education, the available resources of the Government will be directed mainly towards the following targets: -

(a) A reorganisation of the secondary school system to divert a much larger number of students to technical education and vocational training. A Cabinet Committee with the Minister for Education as Chairman, Minister for Science and Technology, Minister for Labour and Minister for Finance has been set up to supervise the planning and co-ordination of technical and vocational training on a national basis with the object of avoiding duplication of effort and ensuring that technical education and vocational training will be keyed to manpower needs and employment opportunities.

(b) A concerted effort to produce effectively bilingual school -leavers to ensure wider opportunities for higher education and employment in our multi-racial society. Increasing use will be made of the second language as a medium of instruction. As far as possible, students in non-English language schools will study mathematics, science and technology in the medium of English and the humanities through one of the other, either their mother language Malay, Chinese or Tamil. In English language schools, the mother tongue will be more extensively used to make students effectively literate and fluent in a second language.

(c) Increasing emphasis on quality at all levels of education to make up for shortcomings in the past necessitated by the unprecedented rate of expansion in the school system to provide a place for every child. Now that this quantitative target has been achieved, attention will be turned to qualitative improvement in such fields as curriculum reform, textbooks and teaching aids, teaching techniques, teacher training and re-training, examinations, health education, physical education, art and music, and all forms of extramural activity. A few well-established secondary schools will be converted to single-session schools, so that maximum use may be made by students of laboratories, school libraries, playing fields and other amenities.

(d) Integration of the 4 language streams is to be extended to aided schools wherever possible. The policy of integration, which has helped to overcome the language barrier, has so far been confined to Government schools only. Ways and means will be found to introduce the system to aided schools.