MBMMBI: 10,000 TEACHERS TO BE SPECIALLY TRAINED THIS YEAR, SAYS MALAYSIAN DPM

KUALA LUMPUR, April 25 (Bernama) -- The Education Ministry targets to train
10,000 English language teachers this year to raise their competency in teaching
the subject.

Deputy Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin said the move was in line
with the implementation of the "Upholding the Malay Language and Strengthening
Command of English" (MBMMBI) policy for Year One primary school pupils starting
from next year.

"Although the 'Teaching and Learning of Science and Mathematics in English'
(PPSMI) has been abolished, the government is undertaking various efforts and
and strategies to raise proficiency in English.

"Almost 12,000 teachers teaching English had attended the special training
programme held last year, and this year the ministry targets another 10,000
teachers to undergo the same programme," he said in reply to Senator Ng Fook
Heng at the Senate sitting Monday.

Ng wanted to know the measures to be taken by the government to improve
English proficiency of primary and secondary schoool students, considering that
PPSMI would be abolished for Year One pupils from next year.


MBMMBI was introduced to replace PPSMI from 2012, after if was found that
the policy failed to achieve its objective of raising students' proficiency in
English, which have affected their performance in the two subjects, especially
among rural students.

Muhyiddin who is also Education Minister, said besides setting up the MBMMBI
Implementation Main Committee which was chaired by him, the ministry targeted to
hire 600 retired English language teachers on a contract basis from this year
until 2013.

He said until March this year, 168 of such teachers had taken up the offer,
while the government had also brought in 375 English native speakers from abroad
to improve the professionalism of English language lecturers and teachers, with
360 of these experts appointed as mentors for the English language teachers at
1,800 primary schools.

Muhyiddin said the capacity of the computers rooms in schools had also been
raised to also serve as English language labs, with 20 primary schools chosen as
the pioneer group last year and another 700 schools targeted for this year.

He said the government had also allocated RM6 million (US$1=RM2.99) to
supply additional reading material in English for primary schools' resource
centres this year.


The deputy prime minister also said that to minimise the effects of the
change of policy, the government had introduced the "soft landing" approach,
whereby the teaching and learning of Science and Mathematics could be done in
two languages, depending on the capability of the teachers and pupils.

"This means that the examination papers will be prepared in the two
languages and it is up to the students to answer the questions in the language
they can easily understand."

He said to help the teachers and pupils adapt to the change, the process
would be done in stages until the full implementation of MBMMBI in 2015 which
would also see the last cohort of the PPSMI programme.