There were questions as to the reliability of survey findings on the efficacy of PPSMI.

It will be very difficult to conduct a survey to measure the effect of teaching science and mathematics in English to assess the improvement in the standards of English. The best the survey can hope to achieve is to measure whether there has been a serious drop in the standard of science and mathematics after the change in the medium of instruction. One might be able to ask for improvement if the language chosen has been more familiar to the students and the teachers alike. Obviously, the teachers who had no strong grounding in the English language would find it difficult to impart their knowledge and the students even if they were as well verse as the teachers could hope only to learn as mush as the teachers were able to impart.

The failure of PPSMI is to be expected even before it started, in terms of failing to improve the standard in the command of English among the students. PPSMI has no way of improving the standards of mathematics and science even in secondary schools, because the students did not have to read beyond the textbooks provided. Thus, research presenting in English language have nothing to do with the students in secondary school. It was a total flop for PPSMI in primary schools.

Science and mathematics do not have to be taught in English in the sense that the teachers are required to speak in English. The teachers should be allowed to use the language that they are comfortable in communicating, but they can teach and explain the subject in BM while using English textbook. For that matter, the teacher could use the language which the students are able to understand, such as a mixture of English and Malay, or English and Chinese as the case may be. The teachers who are now using English textbooks to teach and communicate in English should have no problems understanding the language used in the textbooks but may find difficulty in oral presentation. Thus, even if PPSMI are abolished in secondary schools, they should have no problems to continue using English textbooks. Though the medium of oral instruction could be in Malays, or according to what the teachers are more comfortable with, examination questions should be bilingual, and the students are allowed to answer them in the language of their choice. Indeed since both English and Malays are taught in schools, they can be given a choice in answering the questions. It was the knowledge of the subject that is under examination, not the language.

Mahathir’s chedet blog shows 85% disapproval of the discontinuation of PPSMI. Superficially, it would appear that people have overwhelming supported PPSMI as though it was the only sensible approach to improving the standards of English language. The poll as it was constructed on a simple yes and no answer has not catered for the choice of yes-but, or no-but.

The students who had been made to accept PPSMI over the past 6 years had gotten used to the English term, and they certainly do not want to switch language midway. But PPSMI is not about the preference of those who have been in it. It has to take into consideration of the choice if the students had not been forced into it.

Students in the secondary schools might have been able to accept PPSMI because they had sufficient grounding of the language to follow the teaching in English.

But PPSMI is definitely a bad policy for primary school. Those who had supported the reversal of PPSMI are parents in the primary schools. There are necessarily smaller in number who would vote on TDM’s blog. It is to be expected that students who are in the secondary schools would prefer status quo. Further, it has been generally accepted that English is important because of its wide reach and use in all spheres of live. Voters are worried that a reversal of PPSMI would see the rise of Bahasa Malaysia nationalism, as TDM wanted to convert the technical issue into ideological dispute.

The government is certainly right to oppose PPSMI for primary schools. If they still accept that it is the lack of teachers who could conduct proper oral teaching in English, then they should modify it to accept the use of English textbooks, but allow the teachers to choose the medium of oral instruction in secondary schools. Students should be given a choice to answer them in either language, English or BM.

Taiwan adopted English text books for science and mathematics since 1950s, and students from Taiwan went on to collect Nobel prizes. That should be the revised PPSMI the government should look into.