STUDY OF MALAY IN SCHOOLS

Mr Chiam See Tong asked the Minister for Education whether steps are being taken in schools to encourage the study of the Malay language amongst non-Malay students.

Dr Tony Tan Keng Yam: Since 1986, the Ministry of Education has made available Malay as a third Language programme to the top 10% of PSLE pupils. Under this scheme, non-Malay pupils who did not study Malay at primary school are given the opportunity to study Malay in addition to English and their mother tongue second language. They will sit the ML2 examination at GCE 'O'level.