VII - Refinements to the NES

Summary

A Single National Stream

THE Goh Report observed the continuing trend amongst parents to register their children in English schools. By 1983, more than 99 per cent of the children were registered in English schools. This prompted the announcement in December 1983 of a single national stream whereby all pupils would offer English as a first language (ELI) and either T (TL2), Malay (ML2), or Chinese (CL2) as a second language. This announcement signalled the end of the parallel systems of education which arose during the British period. A similar trend in the proportion of pupils offering English as the medium of instruction in the Monolingual course (from 37 per cent in 1980 to 91 per cent in 1984) led to a decision for the course to be offered only in English. In 1986, in response to requests from their respective communities, non-Chinese pupils whose PSLE results fell within the top 10 per cent, were allowed to offer their mother tongue, i.e., Malay or Tamil, at first language level in secondary schools. Thus, as envisaged in the Goh Report, the attainment of an education system where great prominence was attached to English came about through the desire of pragmatic parents for their children to be educated in English and not as a result of directives from the Ministry of Education.

Streaming at P3

Even though great care was exercised to ensure that pupils were not streamed to an inappropriate course, public feeling against streaming persisted. This was due in part to ignorance of the safeguards introduced. For example, many of those who argued against the Monolingual course were not aware that a child would be streamed to it only if he had, in addition to failing both his P2 and P3 examinations, failed an Achievement Test set by the Ministry. It was also not generally known that almost all the pupils (generally about 90 per cent) in each P3 cohort would go to the Normal and Extended courses. Table II shows the numbers and percentages of pupils streamed to the various courses during the period 1982-86.