KUALA LUMPUR, Nov 28 – The existence of Sekolah Jenis Kebangasaan Cina (SJKC) or Chinese national-type primary schools will not become an obstacle to national unity. Deputy Minister of Education, Senator Chong Sin Woon said until yesterday, there were 15 per cent of SJKCs students are not from the Chinese society.
Through that percentage, he said that SJKC is the preferred choice of other races, so there is no issue of SJKC being an obstacle to national unity. He said this in reply to a supplementary question from Dr Lee Boon Chye (PKR-Gopeng) in Kuala Lumpur. According to him, Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak has pledged that it will not abolish SJKC and SJKT.
In the meantime, Chong also said that this is because BN policy based on diversity of race, religion and culture. In a related development, he said, the government has created a class of Mandarin, Tamil, Arabic and Japanese as an elective subject options in national schools.
“We are not obliged to take those languages, for example, to make it compulsory for Chinese students in national schools to study Mandarin. This is just an effort to create options for those studying in national schools,” he said when replying to a supplementary question from Datuk Shabudin Yahaya (BN-Tasik Gelugor).
