Pros & Cons.

There are both pros and cons in the issue of reducing the weightage of Mother Tongue language in the PSLE.

By lowering down the weightage of Mother Tongue in the PSLE, it do help students with lesser language abilities as all students have different strengths and weaknesses. Thus, students with weak language skills will be able to do well and concentrate well on the other subjects. On the other side, students with a stonger language skills are at a disadvantage. Quoted from the article, S'poreans split on Mother Tongue weighting, it states that 'Children from disadvantaged families who may be strong in Mother Tongue will be kept out of the best secondary schools.'

Secondly, the bilingual policy was introduced many years ago. All students are to study their subject-matter curriculum through the medium of English, but they are also required to take another subject which is their official mother tongue language. Mandarin for Chinese, Malay for Malays and Tamil for Indians. It has been practised for many years and has been going on smoothly thus they should not reduce the weightage of Mother Tongue in the PSLE.


By Zhengyi.