Education Minister Musa Mohamed (photo) today said it is yet to be confirmed if all Chinese-based political parties in Barisan Nasional had rejected the teaching of Mathematics and Science in English in Chinese primary schools.

He was commenting on Malay-language daily Utusan Malaysia 's front-page main report today which claimed that all the ruling front parties that represented Chinese Malaysian interests have reached a consensus to retain Mandarin as the medium of instruction for both subjects in Chinese primary schools.

He said this when asked by reporters at the Parliament lobby today, pointing out that the news, which quoted an unidentified MCA source, is unofficial.

Unofficial report

"I consider the news report as unofficial. Let's wait for the announcement which would be made by [MCA president] Dr Ling [Liong Sik] himself," he said.

The minister also said that, any decision made by the Chinese-based component parties would be referred to the head of the coalition, Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad, before any action is taken.

"There is no need for me to comment because the matter has not been forwarded to the party chief," Musa said.

Asked whether the daily's report is true, he replied: "I don't know."

The minister was also queried on his ministry's written reply on Tuesday to a question from Kerk Kim Hock (DAP-Kota Melaka) as to the reasons that convinced the government to implement the new policy.

In the reply, the ministry had among others revealed four studies highlighting the advantages of a "bilingual system of education". The studies were used to support the government's move to introduce the teaching of Mathematics and Science in English.

This revelation shocked DAP chairperson Lim Kit Siang, who pointed out that these four studies "are totally unrelated to the specific issue of using English to teach the two subjects in the first year of primary schools".

'Inappropriate' studies cited

In a statement yesterday, Lim said among others that, it was "astounding" that the minister had used these studies which were based on the effect of bilingual education on "language minority students" like the Greek and Mexicans in the United States, an English-speaking country.

"The situation of national primary schools is completely different as Bahasa Malaysia is the mainstream medium of instruction and the four studies quoted by Musa are completely inappropriate," he stressed.

When countered today with the fact that Chinese-primary schools are already "trilingual", with Chinese language as the medium of instruction, and Bahasa Malaysia and English as second and third language respectively, Musa explained that the definition of "bilingual" in the studies was broader.

"'Bilingual' in the studies also included a situation where children learn many languages.

"The studies are open documents which can be obtained by anyone. They were not only conducted in Malaysia but in other countries such as the United States, Switzerland and Singapore, which illustrated that bilingual children show a better (academic) performance compared with monolingual children," he said.

The minister also referred to an article in English daily The Star recently, written by Prof Chiam Heng Keng from Universiti Malaya, which affirmed that bilinguals are academically better than monolinguals.

Pressed on why the government selected to implement the policy for Mathematics and Science and not other subjects, Musa told journalists to wait for his parliamentary reply next week.

He is due to answer 32 related queries from various members of parliament on the matter on Monday.