PETALING JAYA, Mar 1 — The Malaysian Islamic Youth Movement (Abim) rejected today a suggestion by Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad to bring back the Teaching and Learning Science and Mathematics in English (PPSMI) if Pakatan Harapan (PH) wins the coming general elections.
Its president Mohamad Raimi Ab Rahim said the results of several studies conducted to assess PPSMI’s efficacy showed little to no improvement in the students’ performance after the programme was introduced.
“In 2004, the Education Ministry analysed PPSMI's teaching and learning, drawing upon samples of 1,942 Standard Five second cohort students from 56 schools. It revealed their performance was declining, with some deteriorating even further when going to their higher years,” he said in a statement.
He also said the Affiliation of National Academic Organisations (Pembina) had conducted a similar assessment of PPSMI on 90 primary and 70 secondary schools covering 15,089 students in urban, rural, interior and island schools.
According to Raimi, Pembina's study showed English contributed to a mere 0.7 per cent improvement for primary science classes, and no improvement in mathematics.
He added that at the secondary level, there was only a 1 per cent improvement in the mathematics score for Arts stream students and 0.6 per per cent in their general science subject while secondary Science stream students saw their Chemistry marks rise only between 0.2 and 0.6 per cent, and their additional mathematics scores improve by 0.3 per cent.
“Meanwhile international studies including the 2007 Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (Timms) and the 2012 Programme for International Student Assessment (Pisa) also showed Malaysia's dropped position.
“For Timms, we were in the lowest one-third group compared to the 1999 and 2003 Timms, before PPSMI was implemented. At the time we were in the top 10 category out of 58 countries,” Raimi said.
He said Abim stands by its strong advice to the government to focus on augmenting the teaching of English in schools rather than turning it into the medium of instruction.
“The government should also abolish the Dual-Language Programme which bears a clear resemblance to the PPSMI policy. Many intellectuals, NGO leaders and linguists have stated mastery of the English language should not come at replacing the Malay language as the medium of instruction,” he added.
The PPSMI policy was first implemented in 2003, which sought to improve the English skills of primary and secondary students.
After much controversy, the policy was scrapped in 2012 by then-deputy Prime Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin.
