Parents to hold Amcorp Mall protest over education system

Fed-up over the ‘critical condition’ of the education system in Malaysia, a group of parents are planning to hold a gathering this Saturday at Taman Jaya park, near Amcorp Mall.

The parents, together with their children and other concerned citizens, are urging the government to reform the education system, specifically on two main agendas:

• To re-introduce the teaching and learning of science and mathematics in English(PPSMI), which was abolished in 2009 and replaced with the MBMMBI( upholding the Malay language and strengthening English) policy.

• To at least make available the Cambridge International General Certificate of Secondary Education (IGCSE), currently only offered to Mara junior science colleges (MRSM), in national schools.

Saying that the future of children are in jeopardy if “the current education mess is not addressed”, main organiser ASPIRES (Association of Parents and Individuals Towards Revising the Education System), explained that they have resorted to having the rally as numerous other attempts to be heard have fallen on deaf ears.

“Most of the parents here are not rebel rousers. Many who come from all over the country are even civil servants who might get in trouble for this, but we are just very worried over the state of our education,” ASPIRES founder and coordinator of the PGIP4114 (Parents Gathering in Protest) Shamsudin Hamid told Astro AWANI.

“English is the lingua franca of the world. We are fighting for PPSMI to be returned because how can you replace a policy on knowledge acquisition with one that is solely focused on language?”

“As for the IGCSE issue, how can we have two different school systems running parallel to each other? How we have two Ministries… the Ministry of Rural Regional Development handling it for MARA while the Education Ministry for the national secondary schools? You have to approach education in a national basis,” said Shamsudin.

Shamsudin said that those who study under the IGCSE syllabus, which is internationally recognized, have better job opportunities in the working world.

“The majority of people, especially urban parents feel they have been marginalised by these policies. We are saying that opportunities should be given to all, it transcends communities, not just certain students and only a few for non-Bumis, and rural students,” said Shamsudin.

Shamsudin said past efforts to be heard as primary stakeholders in education matters were futile, including the submission of 12,000 individual letters of parents to Education Ministry and Deputy Prime Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin, without a single reply.

He said that various other memorandums and proposals, gatherings also went unheeded.

Shamsudin said that currently, education policies are being politicized by both the ruling and opposition parties, and asked that a non-politician take over the Education Minister post.

“The education policies of Malaysia must be looked at holistically. Can’t decide on these policies because it would hurt your vote bank. If the PEMANDU minister can be a corporate man, why not the Education Minister an educationist or academician?”

Shamsudin argued that the recent results of the PISA or Programme for International Student Assessment, where Malaysia was ranked a low 52 out of 65 countries, was evidence that the “dumbing down and neglect of English” has affected the education standards on the whole.

He also said that since the scrapping of the PPSMI, intake in vernacular schools have risen while national schools have dropped.

"We have some 70,000 jobless graduates and a third of our students are not getting employed, why is this happening?"