KUALA LUMPUR  — Chinese education in Malaysia marks its 200th anniversary next year, with the first Chinese school opening in 1819 at the Ng Fook Thong Temple in George Town, Penang.

While the Chinese schooling system has come a long way from two centuries ago, educationists said vernacular schools continue to face challenges including prejudice and opposition.

The biggest problem confronted by Chinese, and to a smaller extent Tamil schools, is the prejudice of the national education system, which has sought to fight for the use of only Bahasa Melayu to teach, said long-time educationist and activist Kua Kia Soong.

Because of the political pressure exerted on the government by Malay educationists, Chinese education in Malaysia faces challenges ranging from shortage of funding to limited schools.

“Not only the children suffer. It also prevents inter-cultural understanding,” said the adviser to a human rights non-governmental organisation.

At the secondary level, there are two types of Chinese schools. The independent Chinese secondary school (ICSS) uses Mandarin as the medium of instruction and does not receive federal government funds.

Its pupils study a syllabus coordinated by the United Chinese School Committees Association of Malaysia (UCSCAM) and take the standardised Unified Examination Certificate (UEC).

The other type of schooling is the national Chinese secondary school that follows the national education syllabus taught in Bahasa Melayu and receives government aid.

Pupils take the Sijil Pelajaran Malaysia (SPM) examination (the equivalent of O Levels), like others in Malay-medium secondary schools.

For the ICSS, the lack of federal funding means the schools are reliant on donations from the Chinese community and fees from pupils.

But the autonomy and independence that comes from being outside of the national education system has given these schools the advantage crafting their own curriculum and pushing for educational reform.

A committee was set up and recently completed a blueprint of their suggestions to better the Chinese education system, said Mr Tan Yew Sing, deputy president of Chinese educationist group, Dong Zong.

“One of the things highlighted in the blueprint is the need to find ways on how to assess pupils in a more comprehensive manner without relying solely on examination results,” he said.

There are 60 independent Chinese secondary schools nationwide, a number which has remained since the 1970s when the federal government refused approval for more schools to be built.

Apart from funding, overcrowding and lack of space for sporting facilities are also a major problem, especially for schools in urban areas.

And probably the most contentious issue with Chinese independent schools is the fact that the federal government does not recognise the UEC.

This means that pupils from these schools are not able to enter public universities and gain employment in the public sector in the country but more importantly, the lack of recognition is seen by some in the Chinese community as a form of discrimination, said senior analyst at Penang Institute, Dr Lim Chee Han.

“The issue on UEC is not just for job opportunities in public sector per se, but more symbolic in terms of national recognition of the pupils’ existence and competence,” he told The Malaysian Insight.

“The non-recognition policy, to them, is amounting to discrimination, and it might have created distrust and racial sentiments which are unhealthy to national unity.”

The politicisation of the UEC also played a big part in the country’s brain drain.

“We lose our good pupils,” said Mr Kua, citing ICSS graduate Pua Khein Seng who headed a multi-million-dollar Taiwanese company that developed the world’s first USB flash removable disk called the “pen drive”.

Mr Pua was an ICSS pupil from the rural town of Sekinchan in Selangor.

CHANGING LANDSCAPE
Both ICSS and national Chinese schools have experienced a certain degree of change in recent years, particularly to the increasing enrolment of non-Chinese pupils.

“These non-Chinese parents probably see the economic value of Chinese education which may enable their children to be more competitive in their careers,” said Mr Lim.

“This coincides with the current trend of China rising to become one of the most dominant economic powers in the world.”

The benefit of learning another major language has also spurred many non-Chinese parents to send their children to Chinese schools.

“Some might even see (Chinese vernacular schools) as more superior in educational quality compared to the current national schools. In addition, some of them might not like the development of national schools becoming more Islamic and racially monotonous,” he said.

UNITY FROM THE CLASSROOM
The existence of vernacular schools in the country, particularly Chinese schools, has become a bone of contention among certain quarters as they are seen as inimical to the primary objective of achieving national integration through education.

To this, Mr Tan said, it takes more than language to achieve national integration, adding that racial harmony can only truly take root when the government is seen to be fair to all its citizens.

“There are many debates on how to work towards national integration or racial harmony and many approaches were also suggested.

“No matter what the approach is, in my opinion, first and foremost, the current overarching government policies must be seen as fair to all races,” said Mr Tan.

“Otherwise there could be no guarantee that even putting all children together under one roof can promote racial harmony when one particular group is clearly more preferred or privileged over others.” THE MALAYSIAN INSIGHT