GEORGE TOWN, Dec 29 — Penang Deputy Chief Minister II Dr P.Ramasamy has appealed to the Education Ministry today to abolish the dual language programme (DLP) immediately.
He said the ministry has introduced the DLP programme without conducting an in-depth study on it.
"The DLP was introduced without consultation and feedback from education experts and the public while some parties have labelled the DLP as a new version of the PPSMI," he said in a press conference at Komtar today.
PPSMI refers to the Teaching and Learning of Science and Mathematics in English programme that was introduced in 2002 but abolished in 2012.
"I am not opposed to English and Malay but if they use English to teach Science and Mathematics, it will affect the results of these schools," he said.
Ramasamy said the DLP is a "danger to vernacular schools" in the country.
"This will destroy the vernacular schools. Even the Chinese schools associations are very clear, they don't want it as they want to safeguard the characteristics of the Chinese schools," he said.
"I won't be surprised if in national schools, the Malay language will be replaced in future too," he added.
He believed there is a sinister motive behind the introduction of DLP to vernacular schools especially with the recent development where 49 Tamil schools were picked to implement the DLP, four of them in Penang.
"Even though the schools were supposedly given the chance to accept or reject the DLP, we believe that they may have been duped into accepting the programme with promises of more allocations," he said.
He said Tamil and Chinese vernacular schools will not benefit from the DLP but instead, the programme might destroy the use of the two languages in their respective schools.
"The United Chinese School Committees Association or Dong Zong and other Chinese school associations have also rejected DLP and 50 Tamil NGOs in Penang are also against the DLP," he said.
He said the state will consider forming a special task force to oppose the implementation of DLP in vernacular schools in the state, in addition to a major protest against the programme.
The Education Ministry has introduced the DLP to around 300 schools in the country in 2016.
