Tamil school told to cease DLP or face court action

A group representing the Parents Teachers Association of SJK(T) Vivekananda, Petaling Jaya, has threatened to take legal action unless the school cease its implementation of the dual language programme (DLP).

When contacted, Child Information Learning Development Centre (Child) spokesperson K Arumugam told Malaysiakini that they had raised their objections in a letter of demand which was received by the school's headmistress around noon today.

"If the school does not respond to the letter within seven days, it will be deemed that the response from the school is on the affirmative for the continuation of the DLP programme.

"This will suffice the pre-requisite for filing the judicial review," he said.

Arumugam said the applicants contend implementation of the DLP is ultra-vires to the spirit of the federal constitution and laws enacted therein.

Among others, he argued that implementation of the DLP at the school since earlier this year did not fulfill criterias set out under the Education Ministry's guidelines.

"These include consent from parents and Bahasa Malaysia language proficiency to be equal or higher than the national average for UPSR results in the preceding year.

"These are not complied with. The school's board of governors and parent teachers’ association are completely against the implementation of the DLP programme in the school," he stressed.

He said the school has been previously been served with a letter on March 31, stating that its implementation of DLP is defective and did not comply with the guidelines issued by the ministry of education.

"However, the school did not respond and continued with the programme," he added.

Prime minister Najib Abdul Razak had in October 2015 announced that 300 schools will be involved in the DLP pilot project which gives the option to teach science and mathematics in English.

Since then, deputy education minister P Kamalanathan had in January said more than 1,200 schools nationwide were using the programme after meeting the conditions set by the Education Ministry.

Critics had claimed that vernacular language education will suffer if English is used to teach science and mathematics, despite government's assurance that DLP is a voluntary programme for all qualified schools and students. -Mkini