‘Let schools decide on newspapers’

PETALING JAYA: An Education Ministry directive urging national schools to subscribe to only Bahasa Malaysia newspapers has raised the ire of education groups which questioned the rationale.

“There should be at least one Malay newspaper. However, English, Tamil and Chinese newspapers should also be included,” said Parent Action Group for Education (Page) chairman Datin Noor Azimah Abdul Rahim.

In a statement yesterday, the ministry said such schools in the peninsula should subscribe to Berita Harian, Utusan Malaysia and Sinar Harian which it said are the main Malay language newspapers in the country. It said the purchase of the newspapers could be done directly by the schools using existing allocations.

The ministry said it believed that this could help improve the mastery of the national language among students.

Noor Azimah disagreed with the directive, saying that schools should have the freedom to decide on the matter.

Commending the ministry for its efforts to reinvigorate the reading culture, she said that parents were unlikely to help out by providing funding for this purpose.

“At best, Parent-Teacher Associations (PTAs) will have to fork out funds, which are already scarce. The challenge is also to ensure that the newspapers are read by students and not left in a pile collecting dust,” she said when contacted.

Melaka Action Group for Parents in Education (Magpie) chairman Mak Chee Kin said that teachers had raised concerns with him about the new directive.

He questioned why schools were not allowed to subscribe to newspapers in other languages.

“As it is, schools have to be very prudent with their spending and this directive upsets their budgeting,” he added.

Mak said inculcating the reading habit and gaining knowledge was not only through reading specific newspapers.

“Doesn’t the Education Minister agree that the more a student reads, the better he or she will be?” he asked.

By having newspapers in various languages, Mak said this would help students compare news and make their own judgements.

National Parent-Teacher Association Consultative Council (PIBGN) president, Assoc Prof Datuk Dr Mohamad Ali Hasan, said no one has raised the issue with him yet.

However, he said there should be no compulsion on schools, adding that matters such as newspaper subscriptions should be left to the discretion of schools and PTAs.

“It boils down to a school’s priorities,” he added.

Earlier, a vernacular newspaper had objected to the ministry’s circular to school headmasters and principals for them to make only the three specific Bahasa Malaysia newspapers available starting this school year.

It is learnt that the circular provides guidelines on how to procure the publications, how many copies to buy and how to source additional funding if there are insufficient funds.

In an immediate response, the Education Ministry said besides Malay dailies, many schools also subscribe to English newspapers.

The ministry was responding to a question by The Star on why schools were only directed to subscribe to Malay dailies when Education Minister Fadhlina Sidek had said in January that improving the quality of English language education is the top priority this year.

“Newspaper subscription among Malaysian schools is not new. This practice has been ongoing for years.

“The ministry encourages newspaper-reading habits in students as a means to develop communication skills, critical thinking and language proficiency,” it said when asked if the ministry had also directed schools to subscribe to English, Chinese and Tamil dailies.