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DAP Education Committee to ask for a briefing from the Education Ministry on its analysis that pupils at national schools perform better academically compared to their peers at national-type Chinese schools in the 2002 UPSRMedia Statement by Lim Kit Siang (Penang, Wednesday): All Malaysians should be interested in the recent finding by the Education Ministry that pupils at national schools perform better academically compared to their peers at national-type Chinese schools in the 2002 Primary School Assessment Test (UPSR) results. Media reports quoted a Education Ministry source that the results dispelled the widely-held notion that Chinese schools were better than national schools in terms of academic results. The source said that this misconception has caused many Chinese, and even Malays, to opt for Chinese primary schools. As a result, national schools are becoming “increasingly Malay” which does not bode well for racial integration. According to the analysis conducted by the Federal Territory Education Department, more national school pupils scored the maximum number of As in the UPSR this year compared to Chinese school pupils in the Federal Territory. At national schools, 9.7 per cent of pupils scored the maximum number of As, while at Chinese schools, only 6.7 per cent obtained maximum As. At Tamil schools, 1.6 per cent of pupils scored maximum As. Furthermore, while the top national schools in the Federal Territory have more than 30 per cent of their pupils scoring all As, the top Chinese school had only 16.4 per cent of its pupils obtaining As in all their subjects. These analysis seem to conflict with the following 2002 UPSR results released by the Education Ministry last month:
From these statistics covering only mathematics and science, Chinese primary school pupils excelled both national and Tamil primary school pupils, with Chinese school pupils attaining 52.7% with As in mathematics and 23.9% with As in science, as compared to 24.2% As in mathematics and 16.9% As in Science for national primary schools and 15.9% As in mathematics and 8% in science for Tamil primary schools. For overall pass rates (ABC), Chinese primary school pupils scored 92.6% for mathematics and 85.9% for science while national primary schools had 82.0% for mathematics and 80.7% for science and Tamil primary schools 81.1% for mathematics and 74.6% for science. In these circumstances, the finding by the Education Ministry that the national primary school pupils in Federal Territory perform better academically compared to their peers in the Chinese primary schools is most surprising and not in keeping with the UPSR results released by the Education Ministry last month which again demonstrated the traditional high standards in mathematics and science in Chinese primary schools as compared to both national and Tamil primary schools. As the latest Education Ministry finding seems to conflict with the 2002 UPSR results released last month, the DAP Education Committee will ask for a briefing from the Education Ministry on its analysis that pupils at national schools perform better academically compared to their peers at national-type Chinese primary schools in the 2002 UPSR. DAP National Vice Chairman and MP for Kepong, Dr. Tan Seng Giaw, will contact the Education Ministry after the Hari Raya holidays for a full briefing about the UPSR results and the comparative performance of the pupils in national, Chinese and Tamil primary schools in the Federal Territory as well as in all the other states. (4/12/2002) * Lim Kit Siang, DAP National Chairman |
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