MALAY LANGUAGE (Promotion as third language)

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MALAY LANGUAGE:

(Promotion as third language): 5.

Mr Zainudin Nordin asked the Minister for Education (a) what is the progress of his Ministry's efforts to promote the Malay Language as a third language in schools; (b) what is the take-up rate and how many schools are providing these options; and (c) what resources are being allocated to ensure that we continue to have sufficient Singaporeans other than the Malays who are conversant in the Malay Language.

The Minister of State for Education (Mr Chan Soo Sen) (for the Minister for Education): Mr Speaker, Sir, in March this year, the Ministry of Education (MOE) announced that it will provide more opportunities for our students to learn Malay. Currently, most students offering Malay (Special Programme) (or MSP) have to take classes at the Ministry of Education Language Centre (MOELC).

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Ministry of Education is facilitating the opening of more MSP centres, and more school-based MSP programmes.

In May this year, MOE announced that three schools will serve as MSP zonal centres. These three schools are Tampines Secondary School (for East zone), Zhonghua Secondary School (for South zone) and Bukit Batok Secondary School (for West zone). These zonal centres, as well as the MOELC, will cater to students from schools in the vicinity of the centres. In addition, seven other schools will start their own school-based MSP from next year. Just for information, these seven schools are Raffles Institution, Raffles Girls' School, Hwa Chong Institution, Nanyang Girls' High School, Chung Cheng High School (Main), Nan Hua Secondary School as well as Dunman High School. Additional teachers have been posted to these new MSP zonal centres as well as the seven schools which will start their own programmes.

MOE has also completed a review of the MSP syllabus and instructional materials. This is to help the students find their lessons of practical relevance, and to enthuse them in their learning. The revised syllabus and the interim instructional materials will be ready for use next year in 2006.

Currently, under the MSP, Malay is available as a third language to non-Malay students who are within the top 30% of the PSLE cohort, and if they have also done well in Mother Tongue and English. Over 640 students currently offer MSP at the MOE Language Centre in Bishan.

In May this year, MOE has announced that the relaxation of this criterion will be brought forward to 2006 instead of 2007, as announced earlier. This is made possible with the setting up of more school-based MSP and zonal centres, and all these increase the capacity to cater to

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students with an interest in the programme. A few schools that were ready have, in fact, implemented the programme from this year, using their own resources.

Besides MSP, MOE is also encouraging schools to offer conversational Malay as an enrichment programme. The Ministry has prepared teaching guidelines for conversational Malay for primary and secondary schools, as well as junior colleges. These guidelines are on teaching strategies, learning activities, sample lesson plans as well as assessment modes. Copies of the guidelines will be sent out to all schools soon, ie, later this month. MOE will also render consultancy services to schools interested in starting their own Conversational Malay as an enrichment programme.

The Ministry will continue to support the setting up of school-based MSP in terms of teaching resources. We will also provide regular in-service workshops for MSP teachers.

Mr Zainudin Nordin: Sir, I would like to thank the MOS for a very comprehensive reply. I just would like to know whether, at the rate that the Ministry is going, we will have enough teachers to cope with the demand of the students.

Mr Chan Soo Sen: The Ministry of Education will not embark on the programme if we are not confident about the availability of resources, including the teachers. In fact, one point that we may have to consider seriously, speaking as an experienced person, is for the parents perhaps to encourage the students to learn the Malay language under MSP. Because these are students who are already learning English as well as the Mother Tongue, some of them Higher Mother Tongue, in addition to MSP. To

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learn two languages is already quite difficult. To learn three is really a very major challenge. So, in fact, I would consider this to be a more serious challenge than our ability to make available teaching resources in these various centres.