DAP calls for White Paper on TIMSS 1999-Malaysia report

(Petaling Jaya, Friday): Musa should present a White Paper in Parliament on the strategy to be learnt from TIMSS 1999 for Malaysian students to rank among the world’s top five nations in mathematics and science.

The Education Minister, Tan Sri Musa Mohamad should present a White Paper in Parliament next month on the lessons to be learnt from the Third International Mathematics and Science Study – Repeat (TIMMS-R) 1999 which Malaysian students participated for the first time, and the strategy for Malaysian students to rank among the world’s top five nations in mathematics and science.

Five Asian countries were the top performers in mathematics and science in TIMSS-R 1999, an eighth grade level test involving 38 countries and 180,000 students.

The five Asian countries, led by Singapore and followed by South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Japan, had the highest average performance in mathematics; while for science the five top scorers were Taiwan, Singapore, Hungary, Japan and South Korea.

Malaysia was placed 16^th in mathematics and 22^nd place in science in the scoreboard for 38 countries.

DAP has a vested interest to know the detailed results and analysis of Malaysian student performance in TIMMS 1999, and the pointers as to the future directions the country should pursue to establish Malaysia’s excellence in mathematics and science to become among the world’s top five performers in these two subjects, as it was the DAP which was responsible for Malaysia’s participation in TIMSS 1999, making the initial contacts with the organizers of TIMMS in 1996 and persuading the then Education Minister, Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak on the matter.

Musa should list out the lessons the Education Ministry has learnt from TIMMS 1999 to lay a solid foundation for the international excellence of Malaysian schools in mathematics and science by aiming to become the world’s top five in mathematics and science, as I do not believe that from the following results and table of ranking of countries in TIMSS 1999, anyone can conclude that one of the lessons is that mathematics and science should be taught in English in primary schools from Standard One:

Ranking	Maths	Average Score	Science	Average Score
1	Singapore	604	Chinese Taipei	569
2	Korea, Rep. of	587	Singapore	568
3	Chinese Taipei	585	Hungary	552
4	Hong Kong, SAR	582	Japan	550
5	Japan	579	Korea, Rep. of	549
6	Belgium (Flemish)	558	Netherlands	545
7	Netherlands	540	Australia	540
8	Slovak Republic	534	Czech Republic	539
9	Hungary	532	England	538
10	Canada	531	Finland	535
11	Slovenia	530	Slovak Republic	535
12	Russian Federation	526	Belgium (Flemish)	535
13	Australia	525	Slovenia	533
14	Finland	520	Canada	533
15	Czech Republic	520	Hong Kong, SAR	530
16	Malaysia	519	Russian Federation	529
17	Bulgaria	511	Bulgaria	518
18	Latvia (LSS)	505	United States	515
19	United States	502	New Zealand	510
20	England	496	Latvia (LSS)	503
21	New Zealand	491	Italy	493
22	International Avg.	487	Malaysia	492
	Lithuania	482
23	Italy	479	Lithuania	488
			International Avg.	488
24	Cyprus	476	Thailand	482
25	Romania	472	Romania	472
26	Moldova	469	Israel	468
27	Thailand	467	Cyprus	460
28	Israel	466	Moldova	459
29	Tunisia	448	Macedonia, Rep. of	458
30	Macedonia, Rep. of	447	Jordan	450
31	Turkey	429	Iran, Islamic Rep.	448
32	Jordan	428	Indonesia	435
33	Iran, Islamic Rep.	422	Turkey	433
34	Indonesia	403	Tunisia	430
35	Chile	392	Chile	420
36	Philippines	345	Philippines	345
37	Morocco	337	Morocco	323
38	South Africa	275	South Africa	243

The first lesson to be learnt from the results of TIMSS 1999 is that it is not the use of English to teach mathematics and science in primary schools from Year One which is responsible for top scores in mathematics and science.

In the top 15 countries for mathematics, only Singapore (No. 1) and Australia (No. 13) use English to teach mathematics and science, as Canada is bilingual, using both English and French, while all the other 12 countries use their respective mother tongues to teach these two subjects. Singapore uses the total immersion system of having English as the medium of instruction for schools – which Malaysia is not prepared to emulate.

The same applies to science, as apart from Singapore (No.2), Australia (No. 7), England (No.9) and Canada (No. 14), all the other 11 countries use their respective mother tongue to teach the subject.

If TIMSS 1999 is not the source of inspiration for the Education Ministry to use English to teach mathematics and science in primary schools from Std. One, where did it get this inspiration?

TIMMS 1999 has been used by the participating countries, except for Malaysia, for a public debate on the implications of its findings, whether there should be changes to or reforms of instructional practices and curricular arrangements to ensure higher levels of student achievements and the future directions and policy in the quest for excellence in these two subjects.

The Singapore Education Ministry has made public the “key findings” relating to Singapore students who participated in TIMSS 1999 immediately after the release of the results in November 2000. Why is Musa keeping the TIMSS findings for Malaysia under “lock and key” instead of reporting at the first available opportunity to Parliament and the nation?

There were sufficient data in the TIMSS 1999 findings for Singapore to analyse the performance of Chinese and Malay students in the island republic. For mathematics, 96% of the Chinese students are in the international top half while 83% of the Malay students are in the international top half. For science, 86% of the Chinese students and 61% of the Malay students respectively are in the international top half.

The Malaysian Education Ministry should similarly make public the key findings relating to Malaysian students who participated in TIMMS 1999, particularly an analysis of the performance of the Malay, Chinese, Indian, Iban and Kadazan students in mathematics and science to identify their weaknesses and the best methods to raise their academic attainments.

Malaysian students lag behind their Singapore counterparts in all measures adopted by TIMSS 1999 for mathematics and science.

For instance, most Singapore students are in the international top half of TIMSS – 93% and 80% of Singapore students are in the international top half for mathematics and science respectively while only 69% of Malaysian students are in the top half of mathematics.

A high proportion of Singapore students also achieve excellent results – 46% and 32% of students reached the international top 10% in mathematics and science respectively; as compared to only 12% of Malaysian students in the top 10% in mathematics.

I do not have the data for Malaysian students in science in TIMSS, which should be made public in the White Paper on the TIMSS-Malaysia report in Parliament next month.

DAP will challenge the constitutionality of the 2002 electoral constituency redelineation exercise if the Election Commission had abandoned the constitutional principle of “one-man, one-vote” as unsuitable and inappropriate for multi-racial Malaysia