FY2004 Committee of Supply Debate Reply by Minister on Schools Mother Tongue Language

FY2004 Committee of Supply Debate
Reply by Mr Tharman Shanmugaratnam, Acting Minister for Education

1. Several members [Dr Wang Kai Yuen, Dr Ong Seh Hong, Dr Amy Khor, Mr Yeo Guat Kwang, Mdm Halimah Yacob, Mr Ang Mong Seng, Mr Steve Chia] have spoken on the subject of Mother Tongue Language. This is an important issue. I will first explain MOE’s policy perspective on the issues raised, before MOS Chan Soo Sen also replies on this subject, and Mr Hawazi explains our position on the issue of Baku.

2. Our policies on the learning of the Mother Tongue Languages are founded on a basic fact. It is not in Singapore’s interests to allow the MTLs to wither. It is not in our interest to allow new generations of Singaporeans to lose their competence in MTL, or lose an instinctive sense of affiliation to the cultures they represent.

3. There are two reasons for this. The first has to do with how the world is changing, especially economically. Our competence in the MTLs, together with our English-speaking capabilities, are critical to how we stay competitive in the coming decades. Together, they help us stay relevant to Asia, and stay relevant to the West. China especially is reshaping the world, and will reshape Singapore’s economic future. As members have pointed out in this debate, and as others like SPS Koo Tsai Kee and Mr Ng Ser Miang pointed out during the earlier debate on the Budget Statement, that is also why more people around the world are learning Mandarin. The numbers will grow geometrically over the next two decades.

4. Every Chinese Singaporean student should be encouraged to learn CL to as high a level as he can manage. Those who acquire a deep understanding of Chinese language and culture, including contemporary China, will be a major asset for Singapore. They will help us to engage China, economically and socially.

5. The second reason why MTL is integral to education has to do with the type of society we want to be. We lose more than the mother tongue languages if we allow them to wither. We lose our sense of distinctiveness as a society, our sense of being part of a larger Asian history, and of the unfolding Asian story. We lose our identity and confidence as a people.

6. We therefore have to apply ourselves to sustaining the MTLs in Singapore. We must do what we can in schools to sustain and deepen our capabilities in the mother tongue languages. There is no easy way of doing so, no switch to turn on, no rheostat to turn the lights up. It is a complex challenge, because English is the main language of instruction in education from young, and many students lack the home or social environment that allows them to immerse themselves in the MTL. We have to take account of these realities, and find effective ways to develop our students’ capabilities in the MTLs.

7. We know that we will not succeed unless students are motivated to learn the language. Motivation is at the heart of whether they learn it successfully, and whether they use it with confidence once they leave school.

8. We have sought to motivate students to learn MTL by providing them incentives to do so - entry requirements to the next stage of their education, and bonus points if they pass or do well in HMTL. It is a pragmatic approach, and remains a useful and effective way of motivating young students, who will not immediately understand why competence in the mother tongue will give them advantage in life.This approach helps to ensure that our students take MTL seriously, put in effort, and achieve at least a basic proficiency in the language.

9. But these incentives will not in themselves be sufficient to motivate students to deepen their knowledge, go beyond the examinations, and take a lasting interest in MTL after they leave school. There has to be something more. There has to be a love for the language and an appreciation of the richness of culture that the language opens the doors to. And as students get older, an appreciation of the advantages and opportunities that will come with knowing the language. We will have to help students develop this love for the language and help them recognise the opportunities that they can open for themselves by learning the language well.

10. Our efforts to sustain and enhance interest in the MTLs must therefore involve a balance of several strategies. It will be simplistic to assume that we can maintain an interest in the MTLs by doing away with the incentives we provide and hoping students will become motivated on their own. But if we rely solely on educational incentives or rewards to motivate students to take the language seriously, we will be losing the battle. For language learning to be effective, we need more than this. We need a curriculum, teaching methods and assessment methods that will help bring the language to life. We have to provide students the opportunities and experiences that will spur a passion for the language and help them discover the positive reasons why they should learn the language well. And the student’s motivation to learn the language in school will have to be supported at home.

11. The balance of strategies we adopt will depend on a student’s abilities, and what stage of education he is in. We cannot adopt the same strategies for tertiary education as we do in schools. At the tertiary level, the Government recently agreed to the proposals of the University Admissions Committee (UAC) for NUS and NTU to do away with mandatory counting of MTL scores for university admission. There were sound reasons for this. Firstly, as the UAC had rightly pointed out, it is not appropriate for a student’s choice of university, what course he takes and what career he eventually pursues to be determined by his MTL grades in school. Secondly, NUS and NTU have entered a more competitive university landscape. We are opening up to one or two private universities, with the first intakes expected from as early as 2006. They will have their own admission requirements, just like SMU today, which does not take MTL into consideration. Adding to this, NUS and NTU are increasingly competing with good overseas universities for Singapore students. For our universities to thrive in this more competitive university environment, they must be able to select the best students for each course. It is no longer tenable for Government to impose requirements on NUS and NTU that hamper their ability to attract and select the best students.

12. These are the reasons why we agreed that NUS and NTU need not require every student to include his MTL grade in the admissions score. However, students will still be required to have a passing grade in MTL to gain admission. Those who do well in MTL (as an ‘AO’ subject) can still choose to use it in their university admission scores. And those who take MTL or HMTL as a full ‘Á’ level subject will still be able to include it in their admission scores, as one of their ‘A’ level subjects. But the MTL grade will no longer be a mandatory component of the scores, just as it is not a mandatory component for JC or polytechnic admission.

13. In the school system, MOE will retain incentives for students to offer MTL to as high a level as they can manage. Bilingualism remains a cornerstone of school education. All students will continue to do MTL for 10 years of general education; 12 years if they carry on through JC. It may be worth reminding members of the incentives we have in place to encourage students to take MTL seriously in school. MTL is part of students’ PSLE scores for admission to secondary school. Even with the greater flexibility that some schools will have in admissions, MTL will remain a fundamental feature of progression requirements. Those who pass HMTL get bonus points for admission to SAP schools. At the JC level, students going to JCs have to pass MTL (at least D7). Those who do well in MTL can include it in their scores for JC admission - 50% of those admitted to our JCs in fact do so. Those who do well in HMTL can use the subject instead of English (EL) in their JC admission score - 10% of the students already do so. Those who obtain at least a C6 grade in HMTL get bonus points for JC admission.

14. These are significant incentives. Few other countries provide similar incentives for school admission. But our language environment is unique and the fact that these are not just second languages but our mother tongue languages requires that we give them additional emphasis in our schools.

15. Our real challenge is to go beyond these incentives, to nurture a passion in our students for the languages, an interest that they carry with them after they have completed their examinations and leave school.

16. This is a major priority for MOE. That is why we are undertaking a comprehensive review of our CL teaching and learning methods.The CL Curriculum and Pedagogy Review Committee, chaired by Mr Wee Heng Tin, will study how we can improve the CL curriculum and teaching approaches to better motivate and interest students in the language as they progress through school. The Committee will see how we can introduce innovative CL teaching and assessment approaches in our schools. It will study the appropriate level of emphasis that should be given to the various language skills - listening, speaking, reading and writing. It will also study the extent to which we need a differentiated approach to teaching CL to different students, in primary and secondary schools, so as to best sustain every student’s interest in the language.

17. It will also explore possibilities to enrich CL learning at the JC level. The new JC curriculum framework from 2006 will have the flexibility to allow for new, elective subjects, including those relating to China. MOE will be exploring with the universities and JCs on how we can develop a ‘China studies’ elective in the new curriculum, which can focus on Chinese history and the contemporary Chinese economy and society. It can be part of the range of subjects that students can choose from, as part of the broader curriculum that they will take in future. We will study this.

18. However, improvements to the curriculum and innovations in teaching will not be enough. We have to provide more opportunities for students to pursue their interests in MTL outside the classroom. We are re-doubling our efforts to give our students an exposure to China, through schools’ linkages and exchange programmes with their counterparts in China. Currently, about 1200 students go to China each year on exchange or immersion programmes. We will have to scale up this number.

19. We are also exposing our school leaders to China. We have begun sending principals to the Tsinghua Executive Programme which is coordinated in Singapore by MTI. This and other opportunities have to be used to give school leaders a clear sense of the challenge and excitement of an unfolding China, so that they can impart the same to our teachers and students.

20. The schools and JCs which are part of the new integrated programmes will now have additional scope to provide an informal curriculum to raise their students’ exposure to CL and to China. Those with LEP centres, like Hwa Chong and Temasek JC, can do more.

21. Mr Yeo Guat Kwang had asked if the refinements in MTL policy would have an impact on the role of MTL teachers in JCs and CIs. We do not intend currently to redeploy MTL teachers out of JCs and CIs. There will be some reduction in teaching requirements as students choose not to retake their MTL exams in JC2. However, the JCs and CIs will have ample need for their MTL teachers, if we are to make the most of the opportunities for MTL learning that I mentioned earlier, including the informal curriculum. There will also be a need for teaching resources if we introduce a China studies elective in the JC curriculum. However, MOE is also mindful of the fact that there is a shortage of senior teachers who can teach HCL at the secondary level, especially as more students offer the subject with our recent liberalisation of the eligibility criteria. We will therefore not rule out deploying a few JC/CI teachers to senior teaching positions at the secondary level. Such deployment takes place regularly in our system as a matter of course.]

22. The universities are also doing more to spur their students’ interest in the study of CL. NUS, NTU and SMU are promoting student awareness of China through exchange programmes with Chinese universities. NUS has established a Shanghai Overseas College in Fudan University to provide a 1-year internship programme to NUS students, that will include Fudan-taught entrepreneurship courses. NTU is offering CL as a major next year for undergraduates of NTU’s Schools of Humanities and Social Sciences.

23. We will work on these initiatives in education, to sustain and raise the interest in the MTLs amongst young Singaporeans and ensure a vibrant future for the languages. It has to be a multifaceted strategy, not focused on incentives and rewards alone. It will continue to be founded on sound educational precepts and the best interests of Singapore. We have not shaped our MTL policies for political expediency, and we will not do so now. It was quite misleading for Dr Ong Seh Hong to suggest that the removal of MTL as a mandatory component in university admission was in response to pressure from those who dislike he language. We do not shape our MTL policy to balance constituencies.

24. We will also address the different needs and capabilities of our students. Every student must be encouraged to take an interest in the MTL, even if not every student goes the same distance in school. I do not agree with Mr Yeo Guat Kwang when he said that those who have difficulties with the language should drop it. We should not have an ‘all or nothing’ approach to education, whether in languages or any other subject. Do we tell an EM(3) student who is having difficulty in Mathematics that he should drop the subject? Let’s help every student go as far as they can, take pride in the language, and carry an interest in the language with him when he leaves school. Those who are able to go further, to master the language and take a deep interest in the culture need not fear that they will be held back by others who may not be able to go beyond a basic competence.

25. Last December when I took my family to Beijing for a holiday, I met Christopher Yap, an old schoolmate. He is SIA’s Station Manager in Beijing. When he was in school he barely passed his CL at Sec 4. It was an easier subject in those days, but in the school he came from, many boys did no better than scrape through in the language. In those days there was no need to take CL at the pre-university level. He now speaks CL fluently - fluently enough to do the job well and live comfortably in China. I asked him how he had been able to do this. He said he picked it up when he was posted to Shanghai for 3 years, then Kunming and Xiamen for 5 years. Now in Beijing, he has been in China for 8 years. And he is still learning. He told me he is learning the language all the time, even when watching TV at home. Could he have picked it up as easily if he wasn’t the taught the basics in school? He told me it would have been much more difficult. There are many others like him in China - Singaporeans who did not do very well in the language when in school, but have taken the plunge in China, improved their language ability and are doing well. And there will be others like him in future. We will not be helping them, or helping Singapore, if we tell them that if they cannot do the language well in school they better not try at all. We should help every young Singaporean take the MTL as far as he can in school, and to sustain an interest in the language after they leave school. What matters is not just how many laps of the pool you swim while in school but whether you take a liking for it, and whether you are able to make the most of a huge ocean of opportunities that await you after you leave school.