There was a time where all public schools used English for maths and science. And briefly we had experience a single stream system. But guess who ended up falling behind and reset everything.

90s kids will know... we had this with English instead but was taken down because certain group not catching up
https://www.asiaone.com/News/Education/Stor...709-153653.html

We progressed... but ended up taking a huge step backwards.. and now blaming the system that was re-introduced.

This post has been edited by Bonchi: Jan 2 2020, 09:11 AM

Actually thanks to that of teaching Science and Maths in English, the fluency of both English and BM is pretty high among the 90s kids. Especially those from SRJK. Welp the gov back then intended to ruin this advantage by reverting a decade long system and i guess they are pretty successful at creating this chaos we have today.

So.... i am pretty sure that changing all Science and Maths to BM would create a similar outcome as before and would once again ironically reduce that so called advantage (For IPTA). That's why with such an obvious solution, yet they only thought of abolishing SJK.... clearly unifying and creating an equal playing field was never their main goal.

SRJKC was kinda happy to oblige the teaching of Science and Maths in English actually. You dont hear much complains back then because no doubt it is beneficial for the kids and they took the ministry's decision well.

And then after a decade the ministry made them switch their syllabus back to their respective language. It was dictated by the ministry and not the SRJK.

However you'd be surprised that those higher performing SRJKC schools would do afterschool classes and have a special subject for English in Science and Maths or even using Singapork's English syllabus to teach..... to 90s kids, raise your hand if you remember these colourful striped text books (I guess it's mainly to aid their top classes's students to nail the ASEAN scholarship programme offered by singkie)


This post has been edited by Bonchi: Jan 2 2020, 09:39 AM

The SJK and SK at one point were all teaching everything in English with BM as a compulsory subject on the same syllabus and Mandarin and Tamil as extra. It wasnt MCA/DAP/MIC who scrapped this but UMNO This single language stream has been around for the entirety of 2002~2012 so I'll assume that you're either too old or too young to notice this.

And also is there actually a SJK for secondary school? i thought it was primary school jer....... even the well known chunghwa public and kuncheng secondary school in KL teach the syllabus in BM while doing an extra mandarin subject for SPM. So i dont think that 6 years of vernacular education in primary school leaves any huge impact at all...

And that those Chinese who cant speak BM properly are plainly just suck in studies.. I'm pretty sure their mandarin also sucks balls and they actually speak mostly Cantonese/Hokkien.

no doubt mandarin is advantageous ... but i dont think we should force it to be compulsory especially in Malaysia. Afterall many kids are struggling to keep up with that many subjects already... even with 2 language they can barely manage.

And also why want to share the pie if everyone speaks mandarin then there'll be no more advantage for mandarin speakers in the job hunt .


We should pretty much go back to 2002 and use that teaching of Science and Maths in English Moral studies in BM. retain the SJK for their additional language class for parents who thinks their kids can cope with the extra language. The rest can just go SK.

This post has been edited by Bonchi: Jan 2 2020, 03:00 PM

True that. that's why those that cant speak proper BM/English but converse in mandarin daily.. their mandarin is actually at the level of Bahasa rempit to BM speakers. Having worked with Taiwanese and PRCs.. they admitted that they can never fully understand daily malaysian mandarin which turns out to be a rojak of slangs from dialects and a grammatical nightmare . When there's too many things to focus, they'll end up mastering nothing.

Well it's always good to have additional knowledge but we have to make sure the kids are truly competent with English at the very least before adding more ingredients to the soup.

It's a simple formula really.... as a student, if they cant be fluent in a compulsory language such as BM and English, What is there to say about their mandarin level... which coincidentally is one of the most difficult language to learn. ... and in the same context.. those SK dudes should also look in the mirror about their BM. Speaking bahasa pasar is not fluency lmao.

When it is a required criteria, they will expect to see some level of fluency like read and write.. or perhaps a supporting SPM result... usually can judge through interview.


Sending kids to SJK especially SJKC is not entirely for the mandarin language (afterall from 2002-2012 the teaching medium for science and maths were english). The main purpose is actually for the learning motivation and the teaching environment which is culturally similar to schools in east asia.. where their goal is to excel in exams. Almost every high performing SJKC in KL will have after school classes to further boost the main UPSR subjects and perform hours of revision on past year questions to better prepare the kids for the actual exam.

Comparatively, SJKC is so competitive that the top scorers for UPSR will even be rewarded, in some schools ... with cash from the PIBG's fund. im not joking lol...... And there will be alot of emphasis on the top classes where they are given alot of private opportunities to join competitions or apply scholarships especially the ASEAN scholarship where they will send a batch of promising students every year to take the qualifying exam.

SJKC will always use these achievements to get more students because with minimal funding from the ministry to maintain their school, they survive on "donations" and that the future of the school lies on the student's headcount.

These additional opportunities and initiatives that you dont usually see in SK is what made SJKC stand out.

This post has been edited by Bonchi: Jan 2 2020, 04:50 PM

of course i do, my highschool have many that came from one of the schools you mentioned .. but you also cannot rule out the sheer number of SJKCs that equally have a good streak of academic and co-curricular achievements. Not to mention the entry criteria to SJKC is not as difficult... and that they're all just average schools.

But got to note that not all SJKC are good also... deswai some SJKC with the same name but diff campus, one will be favored more than the other eventhough they are side by side.

This post has been edited by Bonchi: Jan 2 2020, 05:08 PM

good mar... good at producing engineers, lawyers, medicine and finance people. Where the skill at reading, digest and vomit on exam papers will help them to get their papers increasing our country's occupational technical skill level the quicker way... provided they dont jump to another country.

location i suppose.. like KL area are usually dominated by SJKC in terms of sheer numbers of performing schools.

But then again, the overall performance of public schools including SJKCs are dropping also nowadays... as the more gifted/privileged children are enrolled in international schools/home schooling already. Some SJKCs cant even fill up the class rooms lately.

Because Homeschooling there is a lower student to teacher ratio and so more attention can be given to each student's performance... so when the kid cant keep up, the rest of the class will adjust the pace. But cant expect the same for a class of 50 students to do the same.

but then you can not compare it that way also because the cost is not a joke but this is also why the gap is getting ridiculously big.. the rich keeps getting smarter and richer while the poor just remained the same.

This post has been edited by Bonchi: Jan 2 2020, 05:56 PM

normally the disparity in terms on funding is for land, building maintenance costs and equipment. Administratively, the teachers are all paid by the gov so that's why SJKC will always have a PIBG who will do fund raising and collect donations or do extra afterschool tuition from parents to maintain the school.... Another known method is by investing on building a multi purpose school hall which they will rent to the outside for badminton booking, wedding dinners or even general events and fairs. I dont think there's an actual data because it is not transparent back in the BN days but i can say the funding is so shitty that timidandslow's 300K FD is more than double what some SJKC received. (source: parent is guru besar of SRJKC) I remembered there was a year the school received a 4x 32" TV and and a dozen of crappy computers as the "funding" and the school was like wtf can we do with these shit.

That's why academic achievement is important as they rely on headcount unless they have a school hall.

Meanwhile.. if you drive along kampung areas like PD and melaka... those SRKs are daaaaaayuuuuuummmmnnnnn.

This post has been edited by Bonchi: Jan 2 2020, 06:13 PM

cuz you’re taking these elite and selected high performance school that is monitored by the ministry that are heavily funded with state of the art facilities vs the standard SJKCs which is underfunded, out on their own and has a mixed quality of students yet performs better than average.

and the schools you mentioned are all secondary schools.. i didnt know there’s a SJK in secondary level.. because even the infamous chunghwa in KL is an SMK.

Altho a fair amount of SRJKC actually set their goals to push the kids to enter those said schools with their UPSR result. Which is why they’re so academic oriented and many did succeed... but mainly the goal back in my time was ASEAN scholarship.

that’s the sad truth. even then the poor also has too many distractions from studying properly.

didnt know there’s actually a SMJK because i thought vernacular is up till darjah 6.... at least for KL.. where the SRJK are all refered as SJK here.

that makes this comparison a little off because what ive been talking about are primary SRJKC schools where there’s no entry criteria yet. And students these SRJKC school produced are meant to go for those top SMK by pushing for A’s in UPSR. This strict and focused goal is what most poorer parents look for.

Welp, i guess it's location... and not quite fair to compare kelantan to kl as well.

in KL, top SRJKCs are always competing among each other. while the SRJKT and SRK makan popcorn at the side. you go any junior competition, be it gov hosted or private, you will see waves of them participating.... to the point of hiring special coaches and stuff lel... apart from sports, special coaching includes cheer-leading, gymrama, lego robotics, school marching band etc ... and even trololol ones like cups stacking and rubics cube also they participate.


New trend nowadays.. especially among the well to do. It's now more like a mini international school.

hmmm actually it kinda make sense now.

SRJKC in rich states do kinda behave like a private school... because it is not as closely monitored by the gov and they have some form of autonomy as they are actually run by the PIBG.

almost all would teach additional syllabus (mostly from SG) on top of the standard syllabus afterschool... keeping the kids in school till 4pm for morning session and the kids from afternoon session have to come to school at 8am for the extra classes. this was actually the practice since even from my time.

Busy parents especially those working class will like this system. because it aligns well with their working hours and that they can just leave their kids in school the whole day... like a cheap daycare... deswai more and more malays especially in KL can speak mandarin now

I guess this played a role at setting the bar really high for SRJKC in the cities. Meanwhile SRJKC in kampung... i suppose there's no advantage and infact are slower than SRKs because the kids are burdened by learning an extra language following the same time table as SRKs

This post has been edited by Bonchi: Jan 3 2020, 12:08 PM

the old gov actually made English the teaching medium regardless of national/vernacular school for brief 10 years... BM compulsory while chinese and indian language became additional...... people started to see some hope in our education standards.... aaaaaaaand then they reverted everything back to where it was. trolololol