‘Sidelined’ schools invited to Nov 25 rally

Dong Zong seeks support from bodies representing Tamil, Islamic and mission schools against the National Education Blueprint.

PETALING JAYA: Dong Zong is inviting champions of Tamil, Islamic and mission schools to join its Nov 25 rally against the National Education Blueprint.

Chow Siew Hon, the deputy president of the Chinese education pressure group, said the different groups would be allocated time to air their grievances during the rally.

He told FMT Dong Zong had sent out invitations to the various bodies representing the different types of school, which he said had been “sidelined” by the government.

“The ultimate goal of the Education Blueprint is to set up a single-stream school system,” he said. “The other types of school are sidelined altogether.

“Thus we are inviting the 523 Tamil schools, 400 Islamic religious schools and 400 mission schools to make a collective objection with us.”

The blueprint was unveiled by Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak last September. Dong Zong—or the United Chinese School Committees Association—has denounced it as detrimental to multi-stream education.

It notes that the preliminary report for the blueprint insists on the implementation of the 1956 Razak Report and the conversion of multi-stream schools to single-stream schools.

It has also criticised the Education Ministry’s proposal to abolish remove classes in secondary school and to adopt the Bahasa Malaysia syllabus used in national schools for Year 4 to Year 6 pupils in Chinese primary schools.

The preliminary report is due to be finalised by Dec 31.

Dong Zong president Yap Sin Tian has stressed that the rally, which will be held at Padang Timur, Petaling Jaya, would be multiracial.

Yap told FMT the government had never been fair to alternative types of school.

“Every year a big chunk of education allocations are given to national schools, but not Tamil and Chinese schools,” he said.

“The 400 mission schools were promised a lot of things when the government tried to convert them. But none of these has materialised.”

He said Malaysians should not allow certain types of school to monopolise national resources.

Mixed reactions

However, the rally has received mixed reactions from Chinese groups.

Pheng Yin Huah, the president of the Federation of Chinese Associations of Malaysia (Hua Zong), has urged Dong Zong to seeks the views of major Chinese groups before going ahead with the rally.

Many other Chinese groups said Dong Zong did not consult them before announcing the rally. They said they would adopt a wait-and-see approach.