Reducing Chinese's weightage in PSLE

Recently, Ministry of Education(MOE) has revealed that they may reduce the weightage of Chinese in PSLE as part of their new plan to promote bilingualism and chinese. About sometime ago, Minister Mentor Lee said to the press that whatever they have done was wrong. Now, MOE is working to create a new plan such that Chinese would not be neglected in Singapore and Singapore students can reach the goal of bilingualism. Many citizens wrote in to the Straits Times to express their relief on Minister Mentor Lee's decision.

Personally, I feel that reducing the weightage of chinese in PSLE is a wrong decision. This would make them further from their goal. Students would interpret it as more emphasize is being put on English, Maths and Science and they would not study for Chinese or pay attention in class.

Students who were able to score well in chinese would be affected as they could be relying on chinese to pull up their grades. Students who do not score well in english would also be affected. This move is a bit selfish. Shouldn't students who do not score well in english have their weightage of english in PSLE be reduced? Those students who can score in chinese but not in english would have to worry about their grades being jeopardised. After that, we would have another problem from the crowd of students who just can't get good marks for english. Actually, I would fall under that category.

Parents who want their children to actually do well in chinese and english would be shocked to hear this piece of news. This is bringing their children further away from their goal. Education is supposed to be holistic. Students are to be exposed to all subjects of equal weightage to train them in different aspects. By doing this, students may not care about chinese at all.

In conclusion, I feel that reducing chinese's weightage in PSLE is a bad move.