Amanah backs campaign against language programme to reverse English decline

• Mohamad Sabu said his party is not against efforts to improve competency in the language …

KUALA LUMPUR, Jan 20 ― Parti Amanah Negara (Amanah) threw its support today behind a Malay nationalist group opposing Putrajaya’s dual-language programme (DLP) to reverse the worrying decline of English among students nationwide.

Its president Mohamad Sabu said his party is not against efforts to improve competency in the language regarded as the world’s lingua franca, but insisted it should not be the main teaching medium in schools.
"Efforts to improve students’ mastery of the English language should be done by teaching and learning the language as another subject in our education system.
"The execution of DLP is seen as a regression back to the colonial era," he said at a joint news conference at his party headquarters with 35 Malay non-government organisations that have banded together under the name the National Education Action Council to initiate a campaign called Gerakan Bantah DLP.
"Therefore, we fully support Gerakan Bantah DLP, and will launch a nationwide programme to explain about this beginning today, and the pinnacle of this would be the Demonstrasi Rakyat on March 26," Mohamad said.
Leader of the 35 Malay groups Datuk Abdulauh Hussein called the DLP a "double jeopardy", claiming that the federal government’s initiative, introduced earlier this year, was detrimental to both students and teachers.
Citing personal research on a similar language programme to teach science and mathematics in English known as PPSMI ― introduced in 2002 by the Mahathir administration and abolished in 2012 ― he claimed many teachers to be incompetent in the English language.
“According to our research conducted in 90 schools of all streams, we found that teachers’ competency was not up to par," he said.
Abdulauh voiced concern that under the DLP, fewer students would opt for the science stream compared to the arts.
He further alleged that the DLP violated the National Education Policy’s prioritisation of Bahasa Malaysia as the medium of instruction in national schools.
The DLP provides schools the option to teach Science, Mathematics, Information Technology and Communication (ICT)  as well as Design and Technology subjects in English or the national language.