Speech by DAP Secretary- General and Member of Parliament for Bandar Melaka, Mr. Lim Kit Siang , when addressing the Malacca DAP State Elections Preparations Sub-Committee at Malacca DAP Headquarters at 33A Jalan Munshi Abdullah on Tuesday, 1st August 1972 at 5p.m.
The 1971 Standard V Assessment Examination- The Poor results of Malacca schools
In last year’s Standard V Assessment Examinations, the Malacca students, whether from Chinese primary schools or Tamil primary schools, did poorly, and there was a high percentage of failures in all subjects.
Malacca Chinese primary schools
Although in the Chinese subjects, the Malacca Chinese primary schools did better than all the other states, it does not mean that the Malacca Chinese primary schools have done well when we note that in this subject, 29.13% of the Chinese primary schools students failed.
All this means is that Malacca has done not so badly as say, Perak where 50.84% of the Chinese school students failed in the Chinese language subject!
But the Malacca result, where about 30% of the Chinese School students failed the Chinese subject, is not one which anyone can be proud about, and the Chinese school principals, teachers, educational bodies and parents should be deeply concerned.
The result of the Malacca Chinese schools in the others subjects of the Std.V Assessment Examination is, except for Science, even worse than the Chinese language. Thus, the following are the percentage of failures of Chinese school Std.V students in last year’s Assessment Examination:
Percentage of failures (Chinese primary schools)
Bahasa Inggeris 45.81%
Bahasa Malaysia 39.00%
Mathematics 26.20%
Science 19.24%
Geography-history 29.36%
Chinese language 29.13%
Apart from the Chinese subject, Malacca Chinese schools have not scored the best results for the other subjects when compared to other Chinese schools in other states.
It is clear that as a whole, the results of the Malacca Chinese schools are deploringly poor, which no teacher, principal, educational organization or parent could be complacent about.
Up to date, I have not seen any Chinese educational organization taking the lead to probe into this grave matter, and I urge all Chinese educational organizations in Malacca to immediately do so, first on the Malacca State level, and at the same time on the national
Level with all other Chinese educational organizations in the country.
The results of the other language-stream schools in Malacca are equally bad. Thus,
Percentage of failures (1971 Std.V Assessment TEST)
National-type(English)primary schools
Bahasa Malaysia II 21.68%
English II 33.08%
Mathematics 30.69%
Science 28.62%
Geography-history 27.63%
National primary schools
Bahasa Malaysia II 25.27%
Bahasa English I 47.94%
Mathematics 49.92%
Science 38.02%
Geography-history 40.63%
National-type (Tamil) primary school
Bahasa Malaysia I 62.14%
English I 52.30%
Mathematics 55.62%
Science 48.85%
Geography-history 56.07%
Tamil language 43.39%
Throughout the country, our children in the primary schools are not getting the quality of education which they deserve. They are not being educated for jobs and a place in Malaysian society in adult life. In fact, they seem to be deliberately mis-educated to be misfits and unemployeds when they grow up.
What is very remarkable is that for the past week and more, where the DAP had been trying to arouse public concern at the unbelievably low standards of education in Malaysian schools and the mass failures in last year’s Std.V Assessment Examination, the Ministry of Education has kept silent. So too has the Malayan Chinese Association.
If the Ministry of Education is genuinely concerned about the education of our children, they would have proposed remedies. In fact, the Ministry of Education and the ruling parties, in particular the UMNO and the MCA, are responsible for this intolerable state of affairs where our children are being mis-educated in schools, learning practically nothing after five or nine years’ of education.
This is one of the reasons of the high rate of unemployment among youths in Malaysia.
If the Government, the Ministry of Education and the MCA try to run away from their responsibilities, the principals, teachers, parents, and the educational organizations cannot and should not shirk away from their responsibilities to educate the young Malaysians. Let them stand forward to rectify the deplorable state of education in Malaysian schools.