Even the Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Dr. Mahathir Mohamad, had publicly praised teachers and students in Chinese Independent Secondary Schools and Chinese primary schools as being more dedicated and committed, and that some Malays preferred to send their children to Chinese-medium schools.
Two urgent measures must be taken by the Education Ministry immediately. Firstly, the government should conduct a full inquiry as to why Malay parents have no confidence in the quality of education provided in the national schools and prefer to send their children to Chinese primary schools although they do not have the facilities and finance provided by government to the national schools.
Secondly, the government should end its unfair treatment of Chinese schools and to put them on par with the national primary schools in terms of financial allocation, as in the past four decades, Chinese primary schools received only a small percentage of funds from the government for school development - creating a situation where Chinese primary school pupils had been forced to collect funds from the public. This problem is even more acute for the 60 Chinese Independent Secondary Schools which is completely dependent on support from the Chinese community.
DAP proposes that the Government make a RM1 billion special allocation for the 60 Chinese Independent Secondary Schools and the 1,200 Chinese primary schools to be paid out in the next five years in recognition of their contribution to nation-building.
Each of the 60 Chinese Independent Secondary School should be allocated RM1 million a year and each Chinese primary school allocated RM100,000 from this special allocation, over and above their usual allocations.
(1/11/99)