January 7, 2014
English Proficiency in Malaysia: Time for Urgent Action
by BA Hamzah*
English proficiency in Malaysia has reached a critical level that it can undermine the well-being and international prestige of this country in the absence of genuine efforts to curb its decline. It is impossible, for example, to conduct diplomacy and commercial relations without a strong command of English.
In 2011, more than forty- thousand Malaysian graduates from public Universities could not get jobs in the private sector because they were not proficient in English. A large number of them were Malays from the rural areas. Their “unemployability” puts a drag on the country’s economic growth.
The poor, especially those living in rural areas, will suffer from the lack of proficiency in English. Not only English has become the world’s lingua franca, it is also the language for science, mathematics, finance, diplomacy, trade as well as in other fields of humanities and social science.
English proficiency provides access to the international job market, which can help the poor get a decent, good paying job.
Since the Asian financial crisis (1997-1998), economic growth in Malaysia has not recovered fully. Whether the country can achieve a more robust economic recovery if the workforce has higher proficiency in English is debatable.
There are, however, empirical studies, which correlate proficiency in English with higher economic productivity.To move out of the middle- income trap Malaysia needs a work force with innovative skills to take nation to the next level.
Higher proficiency in English could probably increase the much-needed innovative skills to handle the ever-complex enabling technologies.
According to the Economist Intelligence (2012), 70 per cent of the executives surveyed said to expand their corporate vision they needed more than fifty per cent of their work force to be proficient in English. The same study shows a positive relationship between employability and English proficiency, worldwide.
The strong correlation between gross national income and proficiency in English is now an accepted dictum. Many maintain that the correlation between English proficiency and gross national income is a virtuous cycle, each mutually reinforcing each other. One study shows that proficiency in English can increase job employability and better salaries.
English proficiency among the poor can level the uneven playing fields and close the income gap between the ethnic groups in this country. It could even unite the diverse communities, which have been gravely polarised by narrow ethnic interests.
Admittedly, language can be emotive as it is cultural specific. This essay does not suggest that we do away with vernacular schools and the national language. On the contrary, the essay calls for the nation to embrace a productive global language that can complement the national language.
The decline of English proficiency in Peninsular Malaysia is traceable to the Razak Report in 1956, which recommended Malay as the medium of instruction. Had our political masters adopted the recommendations in Barnes Report (1951) to use Malay in primary schools and English for secondary and tertiary education, we could have avoided the current predicament.
The recently proposed changes to the teaching of English in the National Education Blueprint are too shallow, myopic and cosmetic in nature; no real structural changes, such as reinstating English schools, for example. Without deep structural changes to the teaching and application of English, more people will just lose confidence and trust in our education system. Such cosmetic changes are insignificant; good only for cheap publicity.
In fact, poor command of English has begun to erode academic excellence in public Universities. Before 1971, when English was the medium of instruction, our public Universities were highly rated for their academic scholarship. They were at par with the best in the British Commonwealth.
Today is a different story altogether. Universiti Malaya, the pride of the nation, managed 156th place in the QS World University ranking for 2013. Compare this with the National University of Singapore (24), Seoul National University (35) and Nanyang Technological University (41). Surely, something is amiss with our education system for the international academic community to rank our public Universities so lowly.
The Government must do more to reverse the decline in English proficiency, and has to do it with utmost urgency. Do it now in the national interest.
*BA Hamzah is a keen student of political pedagogy. He can be contacted at bahamzah@pd.jaring.my