KOTA KINABALU: Schools in Sabah will consult and obtain the approval from parents of pupils before allowing their children to take any of the newly introduced elective subjects, namely Arabic, Chinese, Tamil, Iban and Kadazandusun languages.
Director of Education Datuk Dr Muhiddin Yusin said this is necessary in order to avoid any confusion and misconception among parents on the introduction of the new subjects.
“The State Education department will take the initiative to discuss with the parents, even though the Ministry in its circular has not required us to do so. This is to ensure the move can be implemented smoothly,” he said when contacted yesterday.
The Education Ministry earlier this week announced that they were proceeding with making the elective languages compulsory for all Year One pupils this year and schools have been directed to offer all five elective languages to their pupils.
The languages will be taught for 90 minutes per week in three periods of 30 minutes each as part of the Standard Curriculum for Primary Schools (KSSR) which was introduced this year.
Dr Muhiddin said “it is feared that the Arabic language may be misconstrued as an Islamic subject and may possibly offend those parents from the non-Muslim background.” “The teachers will discuss with them so that there will not be a situation where parents may feel aggrieved and the pupils being forced to take the subject. Maybe a pupil may want to take the Chinese language but the parents will want them to take the Arabic language or it could be the opposite.
“So, we will consult them for the good of everyone, especially the pupils,” he said.
In accordance with the Ministry’s circular, all schools should ideally make all five elective languages available to their pupils, except in the event of a shortage of teachers teaching the subjects involved where teachers can substitute the three periods in lieu with the teaching of either Bahasa Malaysia, English, Mathematics or Science and Technology.
Some parents have expressed concern that there are schools offering only one elective language and thus forcing upon the children to take it up.
Muhiddin said data were being collected from all primary schools to determine the department’s capability to fully implement the directive.
“We believe those schools with teachers available to teach any of the elective languages have already started implementing the directive. But we are still collecting and collating the data to analyse what the true situation is. This may take a while,” he added.
He also said that the department was identifying teachers to be trained for teaching the elective languages.
Sabah has 1,069 primary schools with 46,225 Year One pupils having been registered this year.