By Parliamentary Opposition Leader, DAP Secretary-General and member of Parliament for Petaling, Lim Kit Siang, on Thursday, 2nd August 1979:
DAP Calls on Malaysian Indian Community to take urgent joint action to remedy the drastically high rate of failures in Tamil primary schools, especially in Bahasa Malaysia and English.
The problems of the low standards of educational levels in Tamil primary schools have never received serious and urgent remedial action by the authorities. As a result, the standards in Tamil primary schools, especially in Bahasa Malaysia and English, have got worse and worse.
This is further highlighted by the results of the 1978 Std. V Assessment Test for Tamil Primary Schools, which showed that for the State of Selangor, only 8% of the 3,535 students who sat for Bahasa Malaysia paper passed, while Perak is only a little bit better ( if we could say so ), with only 8.4%of the 2,885 students who passed. For the whole country, only 15.2% of Tamil school students passed the Bahasa Malaysia Paper. The following are the detailed state percentage of pass and failure rates for Bahasa Malaysia.
1978 Std. V. Assessment Test
Pass Fail Total Students
Kelantan 0% 100% 7
Selangor 8% 92% 3,535
Perak 8.4% 91.6% 2,885
Johore 17.2% 82.8% 1,286
Kedah 18.5% 81.5% 1,170
Negri Sembilan 22.4% 77.6% 1,034
Malacca 23.9% 76.1% 389
Penang 28.2% 71.8% 681
Pahang 46.8% 53.2% 588
Perils 50% 50% 10
______ _______ ______________
Total 15.2% 84.8% 11,585
______ _______ ______________
If we can take Selangor and Perak, the two states with the most number of students, with a pass rate of only 8%, it means that there must be many Tamil schools which have 100% failure rate, and not this years, but year in and year out.
This situation surely should not be allowed to continue, and drastic remedial action must be taken to upgrade the standards in all Tamil primary schools.
Although the results for the English subject is not as bad as Bahasa Malaysia, it is also very poor, with only 30% passes in Selangor, 29.5% passes in Perak and a national 38.6% passes for the whole country.
The Malaysian Indian community must not allow the authorities concerned to continue to disregard the interests of Tamil primary schools and the pupils, and must demand urgent government-community action to raise the standards and improve the facilities in all Tamil primary schools in the country.