THES 2007 Rankings: Denial Syndrome Persists

There is plenty to blog about with regards to the latest Times Higher Education Supplement (THES) World University Rankings table which was released and blogged here yesterday. I've managed to obtain the full report earlier.

All of our universities which are "ranked" have fallen in positions. Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM) fell to 309th from 185th in 2006, Universiti Malaya (UM) to 246th (192) and Universiti Sains Malaysia to 307th (277)

One point however, sticks out. In a press conference yesterday held by some of the local vice-chancellors, the denial syndrome, a disease which has enveloped our academia has clearly not been cured since the days of Kapten Datuk Professor Dr Hashim Yaakob.

The vice-chancellors, including Datuk Rafiah Salim, of UM, gave several excuses for the dismal performance by Malaysian universities.

Firstly, they blamed the "change" in methodology for the drastic fall in rankings. It sounded as if the methodology was specifically tweaked to disadvantage Malaysian universities when in fact, it was tweaked to ensure greater transparency and accuracy.

As highlighted in the main THES rankings report:

In addition, we have strengthened our safeguards against individuals voting for their own university in the peer review part of the analysis." This improvement in methodology is certainly fair as it prevents the bias to vote for one's own institution.

And the result of the above change in methodology, as specifically highlighted in the full THES report, was the corresponding decline in Malaysian universities rankings!

But we suspect that some Malaysian and Singaporean institutions have lost out because of our increased rigour over voting for one’s own university, and there are no Malaysian universities in this top 200.

This clearly indicates that Malaysian universities were ranked better in previous years in part due to Malaysian academicians ranking their own universities highly when completing the survey! That's academic honesty for you, a la Malaysia.

Secondly, what was disgraceful, was Datuk Rafiah's attempts to de-sensitise Malaysia's dismal performance by arguing that Singapore suffered the same fate as well:

"Even the National University of Singapore (NUS) has dropped to the 33rd spot when it was always within the top 10."

Here, she is wrong on 2 counts. Firstly, NUS was and has never been a Top 10 ranked university. Last year, it was ranked 19th, falling 14 places to 33rd currently. It was ranked 22nd in 2005. Hence Datuk Rafiah Salim is guilty of citing wrong figures to prove her point, with the unintended consequence of epitomising the general quality of local research.

On the second count, NUS remains well within the Top 50 of the world and has not fluctuated more than 14 places over the past 4 years while UM tanked year after year! I don't know how Datuk Rafiah equated UM's plight to NUS's.

Then Datuk Rafiah complained that "The way [she] look at it, smaller countries like Malaysia are bound to lose out as THES has introduced new criteria which is peer review and has changed the citation and list of publications."

Again, it's a case of self-pity which will not take Malaysian academic standards anywhere. Singapore is some 480 times smaller than Malaysia in terms of land area and 6 times smaller in terms of population. That didn't seem to stop them from having 2 universities ranked within the Top 100. Other developing countries such as South Africa, Mexico, Taiwan and Brazil also has universities ranked within the Top 200.

Finally, she asked for more money.

If we want to compete with some of the top universities in the world, first we have to be in the same league. Right now, we are not. One way to overcome that is through adequate funding.

No, Datuk Rafiah, the first thing to do isn't asking for new funding. Giving lots of money to half-baked researchers and academics isn't going to improve the quality of the universities by very much. It's not too dissimilar to the Government's effort of launching our so-called "space programme" by paying the taxi fare for a Malaysian to go to space. Or for that matter, more money could just mean more funds for the academically meaningless pursuit of worthless coloured medals.

The first things to do, has to be the following (in simple terms, as elaborated in other blog posts):

1. Recruit the best lecturers and academicians from Malaysia and all over the world, instead of focusing on race, nationality and patronage.
   
   
2. Enrol the best students qualified for each faculty, instead of the current ambiguous and seemingly random university and course allocation.
   
   
3. Practice transparency in all aspects of the academia, from recruitment to promotions of academics, as well as setting clearly defined minimum entry requirements into every course and publishing such data post every enrolment cycle.

The above are well within the rights and functions of both the Ministry of Higher Education and the university administrators. The question is, whether the authorities are willing to face up to the challenges and weakness of our current system, and take the hard but absolutely necessary actions to raise the bar.

Without the required political will, Malaysian universities will be doomed to further demise particularly if we are preoccupied with treating the superficial symtoms such as recruiting more foreign students from 3rd world countries, instead of tackling the core issues.

I was happy to provide Datuk Rafiah Salim the benefit of the doubt when she was first appointed as UM's vice-chancellor as blogged here. However, her recent statements, her immature treatment of Dr Azmi Sharom plus her outburst at the recently concluded student leaders' meet certainly lowered my confidence in her ability to turn things around. For someone who claimed that raising UM's ranking on THES is one of her 3 core tasks, she definitely appears to be failing her own benchmarks, and failing badly at that.

Footnote: Let me emphasize that it gives me no pleasure to find Malaysian universities dropping out of the Top 200 list. I certainly wish that we have representation among the Top 50 universities, and that'll be something I'll be extremely proud of. But the state of affairs of our higher education requires a "extreme makeover", and demands the harshest of constructive criticisms. Molly-coddling the issues as our government has done over the past decades will not miraculously result in our problems fade away.

Top 200 No More

Many would have reluctantly been anticipating that no Malaysian universities will be ranked within the Top 200 by the Times Higher Education Supplement (THES) World University rankings at some point in time. It didn't happen last year, although we came very close with Universiti Malaya (UM) ranked at 192 while Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM) ranked a little better at 185.

Yes, in the just released rankings table by THES, no Malaysian universities are listed on it. Critics are obviously going to have a field day. But they are certainly not going to be raising many issues which we do not already know. The fact that our universities are not competitive, are not rigourous in nature, do not promote and encourage merit and the total lack of transparency in admission and recruitment exercises served the perfect recipe for continual decline in global recognition and quality.

For the latest summary rankings table, you can get it here.

What are our vice-chancellors and Ministers going to say next? (Click here to read what they said last year) That the rankings are irrelevant? That they are inaccurate? That they fail to take into consideration that our universities are laden with "national interest" concerns? That we will speed up the recruitment of foreign lecturers and students?

This new set of data of course makes a complete mockery of the maiden attempt to rank our local universities, as blogged by Kian Ming recently. While the effort to increase transparency is laudable, the sheer lack of rigour in the local university ranking analysis renders the result superficial at best, misleading at worst. Universiti Sains Malaysia was ranked "excellent" for example, in the local official rankings table, but is clearly no where to be found in the THES or the Shanghai Jiaotung University ranking tables. At the same time, 6 other local universities were ranked "good". Has this become the manner by which the Malaysian government define mediocrity? That being "mediocre" (or worse) can be translated as "excellent" or "good"?

This blog found its "kick" sometime in November 2005, almost exactly 2 years ago, when we exposed the laughable mistake made by the surveyors when UM and USM were ranked 89th and 111th respectively in 2004. The then vice-chancellor, who had to be removed ignorably, Datuk Professor Dr Kapten Hashim Yaakob, celebrated UM's achievement like he won the Nobel Prize. Since then, despite the declared of objective of improving the university's rankings by 5 places each year, UM tanked to 169th in 2005, 192 in 2006 and now out of the official 200 list.

Prof Dr Nik Mustapha Raja Abdullah, vice-chancellor of UKM has also pledged in January 2006 when he was newly appointed that it will become a Top-80 university by 2010. I wonder if he'll make the same public announcement today.

Possibly, the vice-chancellor of UM will now use the Organisation of Islamic Countries (OIC) university ranking table as the de facto rankings table, since she proudly declared in March this year that we are ranked 13th there.

"It is the first time they have come up with such rankings and the top 10 positions were taken up by Turkish universities. It is an honour that UM is in the 13th position while Universiti Sains Malaysia is at the 29th spot," she said.

Or for that matter, we might as well create a table where the world's top 500 universities are excluded, and possibly we might be ranked 1st. Or a table for the Malay archipelago ex-Singapore...

It is sad that our university administrators, our Ministry officials and the Government refuses to recognise the very simple and basic problems causing the decline in our local universities (as mentioned above). Even as the Minister of Higher Education, Dato' Mustapa Mohamed launched the much-hyped higher education action plan, the Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi himself was quoted as saying that "student intake in these universities would not be based on race but the enrolment must reflect the country's ethnic diversity." (faints)

I'm certain others will pick up this thread and keep the "conversation" going even as I don't write as much these days. I should be able to get my hands on the full report sometime tomorrow and hopefully I'll get to provide a more in-depth review of the current situation. And you can be certain that Parliamentary Opposition leader, Sdr Lim Kit Siang will do the same in Parliament.

At a cursory glance, the biggest gainers this round appears to be universities from the United Kingdom, University College of London at 9th (2006: 25th), Kings College, London at 24th (46th), University of Edinburgh 23rd (33rd) as well as the 2 universitys from Hong Kong at 18th (33) and 38th (50) respectively. The universities from China and Singapore declined, but are well within the Top 100. Well, more later.

Letter to Mkini: Criticising the MOHE rankings

Saw this letter in Malaysiakini criticizing the ARES survey carried about LAN on behalf of the MOHE. I agree with most of his criticism but I still think it's a worthwhile first step to take.

I just want to bring out two points in this letter which I don't quite agree with. I'll discuss these points below.

The Academic Reputation Survey (ARES), carried out by the National Accreditation Board (LAN), on 17 public universities (‘Public universities fail outstanding test’, New Straits Times, Nov 3), is a sad reflection of how utterly mediocre our university system is – or rather how close to that, the ARES and the LAN are as tools of public accountability.

The public has been fooled into thinking that this half-baked survey can be taken as a substitute for a ‘ranking system’. The fact of the matter is that it is not a ranking system. It was merely a perceptions survey, without the public being told who exactly were being surveyed. The ARES sent out 954 questionnaires and received 272 responses, supposedly from “higher education institutions, two Asean universities (National University of Singapore and Institut Teknologi Brunei), nine corporate bodies and 19 professional and certification bodies.”

First of all, questionnaires are only answered by respondents (or living individuals) and not inanimate bodies; only individuals perceive, not institutions. This means that we need to know who were the “persons” rather than the “institutions” who responded to the questionnaire. Did they represent the institutions and in what capacity? We need a breakdown of the profiles of these 272 respondents; such as how many were males or females, which institutions do they come from, their occupations, age, educational qualification, etc.

It would make a lot of difference to the credibility of the result (which ‘ranked’ USM as the top university), if, out of the 272 respondents, 70% were from USM itself! Furthermore, what is the breakdown of respondents from the public and the private sectors? If a majority were from the public sector then this could mean a case of government self-praise, rather than independent judgement.

Anyway, statistical validity aside (which happens to be the main problem of this survey), what about “perceptions” then? How much do these individuals know about the universities they assessed on this sophisticated-sounding, Likert-scale (which is nothing more than jottings on a scale from best to worst in answer to the questions of the questionnaire)? It really matters as to who does the “perceiving”.

To a question of whether a postgraduate programme of any university is good or bad - how could the manager of a fast-food chain company, for example, have any idea on how to rate these programmes? How could any of these individuals rate the quality of the academic staff of universities? What yardsticks are they given? I do not want to belabour the need for integrity and precision in statistical methods (or the pitfalls when abused), only to say that this is the crux of the problem of our public universities - even the guardians of their academic standards are short of standards themselves.

It may even be too late to arrest the deterioration of our universities - we are talking about the lives and future of millions of our youths, the country’s human resource, the source of its leadership. I am afraid that the education minister and the vice-chancellors are living in a make-believe world about creating an “empire of the minds” (to quote one VC in his newspaper column).

Here I am talking from actual experience. Just put a Malaysian university student alongside their counterparts from Thailand, Indonesia, Philippines, Singapore and let them all speak, and we shall know that we have done a terrible disservice to our local graduates. Not being able to speak proper English is forgivable, but not being able to articulate ideas and arguments without embarrassing themselves (if they even know of it!) is the graver cost to the reputation (and soul) of the nation.

I do not know what it takes for a wake-up call. I can only say that if it is not now, it is never. And yes, I urge the government to stop the chicanery of devising an internal ranking system. What is the point? You are only listing which of the rotten apples are less rotten, or rather which are the ones having a slower rate of decay. They are all going to get there.

Firstly, I think the writer recognizes that the identity and background of the respondents are crucial in these types of surveys. But he seems to be in two minds about who these respondents should be. On the one hand, he does not think that a majority of respondents should be from either the public universities or the public sector because this will inevitably lead to self-praise, an issue I brought up in my previous post on this issue. On the other, he doesn't think that it is appropriate for a 'manager of a fast-food chain company' to evaluate the quality of our public universities either which I interpret as not wanting too much private sector involvement (or at least private sector involvement of a certain kind).

I don't really have an easy answer for this. Presumably, one could 'solve' this problem by asking more foreigners, especially academics in other universities who are somewhat familiar with the state of research and teaching in our public universities. But this also raises the question of possible 'bias' against the newer and lesser known schools, as well as the possible accusation that we are at the mercy of 'imperialist' or 'neo-imperialist' forces that are trying to bring down the international reputation of our public universities. I frankly think that it is probably better to target a mixture of respondents - foreign academics who are familiar with Malaysia (I can think of many in ANU in Australia), some well respected local academics (Khoo Kay Kim) including some who no longer teach in Malaysia (such as Jomo and Gomez) as well as respected intellectuals and business people who are familiar with the situation in our public universities (such as Zainal Aznam Yusuf, Mohammed Arif Nun, Munir Majid). The problem will be getting enough of these people to respond.

Secondly, I think he probably under-rates our local graduates and over-rates graduates from universities in our neighboring countries (Indonesia, Singapore, Philippines, Thailand). I think if we bring together the best law students, let's say, from these countries, I don't think our local graduates will fare any worse in a mooting competition. I think our best local graduates probably have a better command of English compared to their compatriots from Thailand or Indonesia.

I also think that the average graduate from our public universities is probably no worse in terms of analytical ability compared to the average graduate from our neighboring countries, perhaps with the exception of Singapore, where standards might be more vigorously enforced. This is not to say that our local graduates are great, but rather that they are no worse. Of course, with a better university system, it would be the case that our local graduates will outshine our neighbors in all aspects, including analytical abilities, but that is a long way aways and we might not get there at all if the current situation of academic decline is not addressed.

I think it's too easy too poo-poo the efforts of the MOHE and be critical. I've been tempted many times to do this. But judging from what I see to be a sustained effort on the part of the MOHE, Tok Pa and some VCs in our universities, I will give them the benefit of the doubt for now and see the glass as half empty rather than half full.

Biomedical Sciences Talk

Here's an event for students who are interested in pursuing biomedical sciences:

There will be a meet-up session with Chau Deming, a graduate student from Cornell University. He would like to share his experiences in research in the biomedical sciences with students who hold the same interests.

Chau Deming was a former student at INTI College and transferred to the University of Wisconsin, Madison before he started pursuing his PhD in biomedical science in Cornell University, Ithaca in 2004.

He has researched on cancer research utilizing biochemistry, cell and molecular biology, and immunology technique and specifically, the elucidation of the function of gamma-secretase in cancer development.

He has worked in three different labs during college, first in the immunology department, followed by the food science department, and finally in the pharmaceutical science department.

The details of the event are as follows:

Venue: Starbucks outlet at SS15 Subang Jaya (opposite Taylor's College)
Date: 9th November (Friday)
Time: 2-4pm

Admission is free. For more information, visit Descartes website ;).

PMO office set up to implement Higher Education Plan

Most of us would probably say that the Malaysian government can come up with great blueprints and plans but fail at the implementation stage with regards to these plans. I have been pretty bullish on the Ministry of Higher Education in its ability to carry out its Higher Education Action Plan as indicated by my posts here and here (much to the displeasure of some of our readers). I admit that many of our readers are right to be skeptical given the track record of the Malaysian government to truly reform many or any area in the public sector. But the focus which the MOHE has demonstrated in wanting to reform Higher Education in Malaysia seems to be sustainable as indicated by the latest announcement of the setting up of the PMO to oversee the implementation of the Action Plan.

It was reported in the Star this week and last week, that a Programme Management Office (PMO) had been set up to 'drive the overall transformation and spearhead the development of the project management capability within the ministry.' The PMO would oversee the activities and actions of 13 project teams, each in charge of different areas of focus under the National Higher Education Strategic Plan and National Higher Education Action Plan 2007-2010. There project teams, according to the Minister of Higher Education, Tok Pa, would comprise of members from the academic, from the civil service as well as from the corporate sector.

In addition, the person selected to head of the PMO and its program director seems to have the right experience and qualifications, at least according to the report in the Star.

The chief executive officer of the PMO, Prof Datuk Dr Sahol Hamid Abu Bakar – whose fields of specialisation are civil engineering and economics – has been involved in many projects, including the planning and construction of nine Universiti Teknologi Mara (UiTM) campuses. He was also formerly deputy vice-chancellor (academic affairs) at UiTM. PMO programme director Mohamad Nur Kamal, among other things, whose background is in finance and business administration, worked in the United States for 10 years in a global management consultancy as well as a financial corporation.

I like the fact that the PMO promised that it would update members of the public periodically in regards to the progress of the respective project teams. I also like the fact that these teams will have the expertise and experience of professionals from the corporate sector, who are less inclined to be hampered by 'conventional' ways of doing things within the public university setting in Malaysia.

While my optimism may be proven wrong, I do think that some good things can and will come out of the progressive and focused approach taken by the MOHE and its Minister, in regards to revamping the level of higher education in Malaysia. The road will be bumpy and there will be many challenges but at least it seems to be heading the right way.

USM "Excellent", No "Less Satisfactory" or "Weak" Universities

Looks like the 'rankings' for the public universities are out before those for the private universities. Thanks to a friend from USM for letting me know about this NST article which came out yesterday.
17 out of the 20 public universities in Malaysia were evaluated and 'ranked'. Only 1 university made it to the "Excellent" category - USM. 6 universities made it the "Good" category and the remaining 10 were put in the "Satisfactory" category. None of the 17 universities evaluated were put in the "less satisfactory" or "weak" category.

According to the NST report,

And only one university - Universiti Sains Malaysia - made it into the second category of "Excellent"in the first ever university perception exercise in the country. It received a five-star ranking.

Universiti Malaya (UM), Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM), Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM), Universiti Teknologi Mara (UiTM), Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM) and Universiti Islam Antarabangsa (UIA) were lumped in the "Good" category. They had four stars.

Those in the Satisfactory list are Universiti Malaysia Pahang, Universiti Malaysia Sabah, Universiti Malaysia Terengganu, Universiti Malaysia Perlis, Universiti Malaysia Sarawak, Universiti Pendidikan Sultan Idris, Universiti Sains Islam Malaysia, Universiti Teknikal Malaysia Melaka, Universiti Tun Hussein Onn Malaysia and Universiti Utara Malaysia.

None fell in the "Less Satisfactory" or "Weak" categories.
The Academic Reputation Survey (ARES), carried out by a team spearheaded by the National Accreditation Board (LAN), involved 17 of the 20 public universities.

First of all, I think it is a good first step for the MOHE to even make these rankings available to the public. I'm always in favor of having more rather than less information in the public realm. So I would commend the Minister for making this move.

Secondly, given that this is the first time that such a task has been undertaken in Malaysia, one would expect there to be a lot of flaws in such a ranking system. Even the Minister, Tok Pa, acknowledge this when he said that the results of the Setara rating system, which ranks public universities in three categories, namely, research universities, broad based universities and specialised universities, would not be released to the public as of now because of problems with the data and methodology. We would expect the methodology and the data collection process to improve over time.

These positives aside, I have to point out the flaws, of which there are many.

Firstly, the ranking system should not be based on survey data only. Some more objective data should be used in conjunction with survey data. Perhaps because the ARES specifically aims to capture public perception (or more accurately, the perception of universities among the academia and some members of the corporate world), we should not expect objective data to be included in this ranking. But, hopefully, such measures will be calculated and included in the Setara rating system.

What sort of objective measures? I can think of a few - the % of lecturers with PhDs and / or Masters, the average GPA score of students admitted, the ratio of lecturers to tutors, library book holdings, IT expenditure per student, just to name a few. The use of more objective measures should complement and balance out the measures calculated using surveys. Of course, one could still disagreement of the exact type of objective measure to use since some will obviously be more advantageous to the more established universities e.g. the average GPA score of students admitted. But I don't really have a problem with this given that these so called 'advantages' usually translate into a better academic environment in these universities. Would someone not rank let's say Harvard higher because it has a much higher average GPA entry requirement compared to let's say Diablo University?

The use of these more objective measures also forces the universities and the MOHE to collect these statistics, some of which are important to researchers as well as to interested parents, students, policy makers and so on. Wouldn't you be interested to know what the average GPA entry into UM is compared to UUM? Wouldn't you want to know how much more UKM spends on IT compared to USM?

Secondly, the high non-responses among the respondents who were sent the survey should be reduced. It was reported that the ARES questionnaire was sent to 954 respondents and but only 272 responses were received. That is a response rate of less than 30% which raises possible questions of whether the responses were biased towards any direction.

According to the report, the respondents were replied were broken down into the following categories:

242 public and higher education institutions, two Asean universities (National University of Singapore and Institut Teknologi Brunei), nine corporate bodies and 19 professional and certification bodies.

The large number of respondents from 'public and higher education institutions', which I'm assuming are institutions in Malaysia, probably explains why there were no institutions in the 'less satisfactory' and 'weak' categories.

Intuitively speaking, there should be more variance in the rankings of these universities beyond the top three categories, especially given that I didn't even recognize the names of some of the universities listed e.g. Universiti Malaysia Pahang (where is this university located?), Universiti Malaysia Terengganu (which I'm guessing used to be designated as a college), Universiti Malaysia Perlis (can Perlis support its own university?), Universiti Pendidikan Sultan Idris (I thought this was primarily a teacher training college?), Universiti Sains Islam Malaysia (never heard of), Universiti Teknikal Malaysia Melaka (no idea), Universiti Tun Hussein Onn Malaysia (is this new?). I haven't goolged these universities individually but if any of our readers are familiar with any one of these universities, please post a comment and enlighten us.

The fact that so many of the respondents were from our public universities probably meant that many of them didn't feel comfortable in giving some of these lesser known universities a 'less satisfactory' or 'weak' rating. I think even if the sample size included more corporate bodies or even overseas academics, it would run into the challenge of many respondents who cannot evaluate the universities which they have not heard of or are unfamiliar with.

The fact that many of our public universities are relatively new and unknown is probably why the following three universities were not included in the survey - University Darul Iman, Universiti Malaysia Kelantan and Universiti Pertahanan Nasional Malaysia (what?).

This being said, I think that the rankings are indicative of the relative 'quality' of our public universities. Most people would say that USM, UKM, UM are probably the top three public universities in Malaysia followed by UPM, UIA and perhaps UITM and UTM. The fact that USM was rated 'excellent' is perhaps a validation of some sorts for the more progressive policies of promotion and emphasis on research which the VC there is carrying (Dzulkifli Abdul Razak whose columns regularly appear in the NST).

What we require is a further refinement of the ranking system and more objective measures to be used in conjunction with survey responses.

I'll stop at this point and let our readers weigh in with their views.

Political Expediency or Policy Flexibility?

5 years after the start of the policy of teaching Science and Math in English, it was recently announced that the UPSR exams for Science and Math would continue to be in English, BM, or in the vernacular language of a student's choice i.e. Chinese or Tamil. My gut reaction to this policy is one of befuddlement and confusion. I was imagining me explaining this policy to some of my American friends. So, Science and Math are taught in English in Malaysia, my American friend would ask. Yes, I said, but exams in these two subjects can be taken in BM, English, Chinese or Tamil. So, what's the point of teaching these two subjects in English, my American friend would continue. I don't know, would be my honest response!

You can read about this issue in various Star reports - here, here, here, here, here and here.

Is this decision an indication of policy flexibility on the part of the Ministry of Education because some students still would not be able to handle exams in Science and Math in English? Or rather, is this political expediency on the part of the Ministry and the Minister, Hishamuddin Tun Hussein, so as not to offend the Chinese politicians in the MCA as well as politicians in UMNO, and to a certain extent, certain segments of the voting population as well?

I suspect that it is the latter rather than the former. Furthermore, I take this as an indication of the failure of the Ministry to successfully implement the policy of teaching Science and Math in English. The excuse that some students in the rural areas still cannot cope with taking these two subjects in English is plainly laughable in that these are the same students who have been taught these two subjects in English for 6 years! The same excuse, hence, is also not valid among those in Chinese primary schools!

The decision not to have an 'English only' UPSR exam for these two subjects sends a signal to teachers in rural areas as well as those in Chinese schools that they can 'revert' to teaching these two subjects in BM and Chinese (and for those in Tamil schools to teach in Tamil). As far as I know, there's no 'monitoring' or 'policing' mechanisms in schools to ensure that teachers actually teacher these two subjects in English. So, if students still have the choice of the language in which to take these two subjects at the UPSR level, wouldn't it be 'easier' for teachers in rural areas and in Chinese schools to teach these two subjects in a language which they have a better command in, presumably BM and Chinese?

While implementing the 'English only' policy would have some short term consequences in that the scores in some of these 'vulnerable' areas might be affected, I fear that the medium to long term consequences would be greater. I wouldn't be surprised if in 2 to 3 years time, an announcement is made that the policy to teach Science and Math in English would be stopped because it was found that it had not achieved its objective of improving the standard of English.

I think this would have been a hard decision to make politically but I think the Minister should have put his foot down and fend off the critics and the naysayers. While some may criticize the efficacy of the policy of teaching Science and Math in English in the first place, I think that to give this policy a fair chance to succeed, it should be taken to its logical end, which is to use only English for Science and Math exams at the UPSR level. By allowing students to choose their language of choice to take these two exams at the UPSR level is to doom this policy to failure as teachers and students 'defect' to learning these two subjects in their own language of choice.