KUALA LUMPUR, Sept 13 — MCA Youth wants the Education Ministry to re-look the learning hours for Bahasa Malaysia in Chinese national-type schools (SJK) (C),which is set at 240 minutes weekly under the national education blueprint to 210 minutes per week.

Its chief Datuk Wee Ka Siong said while the wing was pleased with the improvements that had been made in the blueprint from its preliminary report,

they felt that 210 minutes was sufficient for the national language, which is  balanced with the learning of English as a subject.

“Spending longer time learning the (national) language is not the only factor that can improve proficiency. There are other things like the curriculum and the methodology that should also be looked into,” he told reporters after chairing the wing’s central committee meeting here, today.

Besides MCA Youth, several Chinese NGOs had proposed that the national language be taught for 210 minutes per week on par with the English language.

The current syllabus for Bahasa Malaysia in Sekolah Jenis Kebangsaan (national schools) requires 180 minutes a week.

Wee, who is a former deputy education minister, said MCA Youth will submit a memorandum on the matter to the Education Ministry soon, and will be making a resolution on it during the wing’s annual general meeting this December.

He also urged the Education Ministry to immediately post 460 teachers, who had before taught at Chinese schools as interim teachers and had completed their teacher training courses last June, back to their schools in a move to address the problem of under qualified teachers at the schools.

On MCA Youth’s polls, Wee said 2,363 of the wing’s 2,735 branches had submitted results of their branch elections, and of that, results from 2,299 branches were accepted by the wing’s central committee.

Poll results from the 64 branches were rejected due to irregularities such as overlapping of names, he said.

Wee said, this year, for the first time, MCA Youth saw female members being elected as branch leaders in the recent polls, with 175 female members having been elected following to its open door policy in 2010 whereby female members below 35 years old were admitted into the movement.

At the meeting today, Wee said he briefed the wing’s CC members on the latest developments on an extraordinary meeting called by MCA Deputy President Datuk Seri Liow Tiong Lai’s faction to discuss the lifting of Johor state executive councillor Datuk Tee Siew Kiong’s three-year suspension. 

“The CC members gave their views on the issue. And we still maintain with our decision that the resolution (to not accept government post) should stay and be respected,” he added. — Bernama