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PETALING JAYA: An assistant minister in Sarawak says the state has the right to use English as a medium of instruction in schools, as stipulated in the 1962 Intergovernmental Committee Report (IGC Report).
This comes after an academic said that a proposal to establish state-owned international schools in Sarawak went against the Education Act, which requires all government schools to use Bahasa Malay as a medium of instruction.
Dr. Annuar Rapaee, the state deputy minister for education, science and technological research, said that the IGC Report clearly gave Sarawak the right to decide on its educational policy and to use English in schools, and He added that the report was the basis of the 1963 Malaysia Agreement.
“We never agreed to change this policy since we formed Malaysia. Therefore, it must be respected that Sarawak can use English (as a medium of instruction in schools).
“That’s why we still consider English our second official language,” Annuar told FMT.
Paragraph 17 of the report states that the educational policy and administration system in Sarawak must remain under the control of the state government, unless otherwise agreed.
He was responding to Teo Kok Seong of the Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia saying that education was the province of the federal government and that allowing state-owned international schools would be against the Education Law.
Teo was commenting on the state’s decision to establish its own international high schools to produce competitive students with a good command of the English language.
A total of five international secondary schools, including two in Kuching and one in Sibu, Bintulu and Miri, have been proposed using the International General Certificate of Secondary Education from the Cambridge Assessment Board of International Education.
Annuar said Teo should have done more research before commenting on the matter, adding that this measure was more to improve the level of education in the state.
He said Sarawak had long become the “stepson” in education, noting the declining level of education, as well as the “extremely poor” facilities there.
“Give the state government a chance to improve all of this, unless you want to see Sarawak still lagging behind despite our vast natural resources and its leading role in the nation’s GDP,” he said.
He added that it would not be a problem for state international schools to use English, as they would not use the national program but rather an international curriculum similar to other private schools in the country.
“Our international school will be run by a company owned by Yayasan Sarawak and the funds will come from the state government. This does not contravene the Education Law. “
