SHAH ALAM, 15 Nov: The expenditure of RM270 million by the central government for an international mentoring programme in the English language did not yield promising results when the results for the Primary School Achievement Test (UPSR) showed a decline in the subject.
The Member of Parliament for Penang Hill, Zairil Khir Johari, said that the mentoring programme should have trained 7,500 English language teachers for primary schools across the country since it was implemented in 2010.
He said that students were expected to show a slight improvement in the English language results this year with the cost spent.
Zairil said that there is a significant drop in the results for the English language paper among students of national schools; with a 0.06 decline in the Grade Point Average of the paper, despite the overall improvement in performance for the UPSR.
“Therefore, the recent UPSR results is a big blow to the ministry and the irony is that the overall performance of the English language paper for national-type (vernacular) schools witnessed an increase of 0.12 points, with an increase in 4.2 percent for students receiving As and those receiving Bs and Cs increased by 2.1 percent.
“In other words, national-type schools, which did not benefit from the English language international mentoring programme, managed to improve their proficiency in the language.
“Meanwhile, the results of national schools deteriorated despite the central government spending RM270 million in the pas three years, specifically to raise the level of English language in national schools,” he said in a press statement today.