A class removed from the brighter students

Those familiar with the remove class system in Malaysian schools will appreciate the worries of parents.

FEATURE

PETALING JAYA: Latha Veerasamy sits with her 11-year-old son, Ashok, as he finishes his Bahasa Malaysia homework. The exercises are rudimentary and she patiently corrects him.

When he gets it right, there is relief more than pride etched on her face. Ashok attends a remove class in a Tamil medium school. Receiving two pages of homework a week is a common thing and Latha is worried for her son. Very worried.

“My office colleagues grumble about how much homework their children are given on a daily basis, and I am envious. I know this sounds cruel, but I am concerned as to how little attention is paid to the students in Tamil remove classes.

“The teachers at his school don’t seem to care and now at home, I force him to speak Bahasa Malaysia with me because he needs to pass it in order to progress to Form One.”

Lee Lee Wah would echo Latha’s sentiments. A mother of three, she is extremely concerned about what her 11-year-old daughter is learning in her Chinese medium remove class.

“I remember that she didn’t have a lot of school work when classes commenced in January. I dismissed it as a slow start and that the work will increase later. It’s already August and the situation is still the same. I can’t send my daughter for tuition, as she will not be able to follow the classes. Good personal tutors are expensive and I am anxious about her upcoming UPSR exams.,” she says.

Making the grade

Those familiar with the remove class system in Malaysian schools will appreciate the worries of both mothers. It is not uncommon for these schools to neglect the less academically inclined, and lack of homework is one of the signs. Teachers are too busy coaching the potential top-scorers to spend time on the weaker pupils.

The situation is worsened by the switch from Mandarin to Malay as the medium of instruction when the pupils go on to secondary school. Government primary schools use either Malay, Mandarin or Tamil as the medium of instruction. But all government secondary schools teach in Malay.

Pupils from Chinese and Tamil schools who fail to obtain a minimum grade “C” for Bahasa Malaysia in their Ujian Pencapaian Sekolah Rendah (UPSR), are put in remove classes for a year before moving on to Form One.

Pupils in Chinese and Tamil schools take BM papers of a lower standard in their UPSR. That’s why their grades below “C” are considered not on par with the grade “E” obtained by pupils from national schools.

They are not eligible to go to Form One, where the medium of instruction is BM, because they are deemed to have insufficient exposure to BM in their primary school years.

The situation is given a further helpless edge when some parents refuse to send their children to remove classes, a year-long preparatory programme in secondary schools to bring children up to speed in the Malay language.

Pupils who fail their Malay language exam at Standard Six are required to go on this programme before they can start Form One. But those who do so are often perceived to be slow learners, so parents try to get their children exempted from it.

Latha says : “My son loves Mathematics and he is very good at it. Is he going to be ‘punished’ just because his command of Bahasa Malaysia is weak? After more than 50 years of independence, isn’t it about time that the Chinese and Tamil school pupils took the same BM papers in their UPSR as their counterparts in the national schools?”

Grasping Bahasa Malaysia

Looking out for these children is the educational non-governmental organisation Educational Welfare and Research Foundation (EWRF).

In its recent forum, “Remove Classes: To Remove or to Retain and Revamp”, (EWRF) head of research unit Shanthi Periasamy is convinced that students will eventually not benefit from the year-long remove classes.

The forum was held to gather views and information on whether to retain, abolish or revamp the remove class system.

With this in mind, EWRF is studying the possibility of abolishing or revamping the remove classes to help students from vernacular primary schools transition to Form One.

EWRF president A Yogesvaran adds that Chinese pupils have an edge on the Indian counterparts because, “after six years, these students will be able to read and write – the same is not true in many Tamil schools where students struggle with basic reading and writing”.

“There is a necessity to differentiate between students who had not mastered Bahasa Malaysia and those who simply cannot not read or write. Pupils who have not even mastered reading and writing in their own vernacular tongue cannot be expected to learn a second or third language.”

Educationist Goh Kean Seng, who is also principal of a private Chinese secondary school in KL, adds that the right environment must be created to assist students in picking up Bahasa Malaysia.

“Notice boards, done up well, are always very helpful and using the language natural to these pupils like Tamil or Mandarin as an aid should be allowed when explaining certain things.

“’Some schools are overly focused on those who can score a string of As. These are the students who give their schools a good name. But these academically advanced students are the minority. The result is that those who fail to keep up with their schoolwork drop out of school in later years,” he says.

The MCA estimates that 25% of Chinese students quit studying before they are 18, when they are due to sit for a government exam equivalent to the “O” levels. This estimate puts the annual dropout figure at over 100,000 – what the party’s Youth wing calls a “silent epidemic”. There are no official figures on the number of dropouts among the Indians .

All data collected from the findings will be compiled as part of a preliminary study into the issue which the organisation hopes to expand into a comprehensive report to be presented to the government.

This will be a a long-term project which is part of an overall effort to reduce the number of early school dropouts and which EWRF hopes will lead to an improvements in the system.