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Ex-deputy minister, educationist explain need for remove classes

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Teo Nie Ching says it is meant to help those who are not fluent in Malay to follow classes.

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Free Malaysia Today
Remove classes are still needed although a review may be necessary, says Teo Nie Ching, after an association says they are a waste of time.

PETALING JAYA:
A former deputy education minister has explained the need for remove classes – aimed at helping students from vernacular schools who fail Malay in their UPSR examination – after the necessity of such initiatives was questioned.

Teo Nie Ching said remove classes were meant to aid students who were not fluent in Malay, which is the medium at national schools.

The medium in vernacular schools is either Tamil or Chinese.

“So students who are weak in the language might have a problem following the classes when they go to secondary school,” she told FMT.

The Kulai MP, however, said the effectiveness of such classes needed to be reviewed thoroughly, following claims it was killing interest to attend classes.

Recently, the Malaysian Tamil School Welfare and Educational Development Association bemoaned the fact that vernacular school students who failed Malay in primary 6 were “forced” to join remove classes before advancing to Form 1.

This, it said, wasted an entire year of their secondary education.

It also questioned why students who failed the subject in national schools were not required to sit for such classes.

Teo also called for more effort to address and improve Malay language proficiency among vernacular school students, including continuing pedagogical training for teachers who taught Malay in vernacular schools.

Parents Action Group for Education (PAGE) chairman Noor Azimah Abdul Rahim said the issue of remove classes was a “catch-22” situation.

The Malay language assessment in vernacular schools was of a lower difficulty level than national schools, she said, adding that there had been several attempts to align the assessments but such proposals had been “consistently rejected” by such schools.

“This then leads to the mandatory remove classes before entering Form 1 proper to ensure that Malay language proficiency and competency is adequate for students to pursue secondary level Malay medium of instruction.”

She said remove classes were planned to assist rather than discriminate.

Such classes could be abolished if there were efforts made to raise the Malay language competency and proficiency of these students.

On whether national school students who failed the subject should be included in these classes, Noor Azimah said that according to the education ministry’s statistics, very few national school students failed the subject, and therefore may not be cost-effective to have them included.

“Eventually, they will pick it up as they immerse more in it at the secondary level,” she said.

She felt that greater immersion was an effective way to improve the Malay language proficiency in both national and vernacular schools.

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