48 Tan Yao Sua and R. Santhiram
that the national language could become a working language as well as
a language of knowledge production and dissemination to promote a
higher level of sentimental and instrumental attachments to the language.
A host of intervening measures are put in place by the Blueprint
to achieve the MBMMBI policy. The upholding of the Malay language
is mainly targeted at the vernacular primary school students as their
proficiency in the Malay language is found to be most wanting. It involves
the adoption of a new curriculum, i.e. the Primary School Standard
Curriculum or Kurikulum Standard Sekolah Rendah, specifically designed
for teaching students whose mother tongue is not the Malay language and
who do not experience immersion in the Malay language as in the Malay-
medium primary schools. This new curriculum defines fewer learning
requirements in the early years of primary education but converging to
similar acquisition standards in the Malay-medium primary schools by
the end of primary education through the introduction of more Malay
teaching periods starting from Primary Year Four to Year Six. In addition
to early intervention measures such as Literacy and Numeracy Screening
(LINUS), teachers delivering the new curriculum will be upskilled to
effectively teach the language to the vernacular primary school students.
Intensive remedial classes will also be conducted for students who face
problems in acquiring the language (Ministry of Education Malaysia 2013).
In the case of the strengthening of English, the Blueprint has undertaken
several measures such as early intervention programmes (expansion of the
LINUS programme and the provision of remedial support), upskilling of
teachers (testing and retraining of teachers) as well as the introduction
of literature in English and technology-assisted learning pedagogy
(blended learning models) to improve the proficiency of English among
Malaysian students. Meanwhile, from 2016 onwards, English will be
made a compulsory pass subject in the Malaysian Certificate of Education
examination or Sijil Pelajaran Malaysia (SPM) examination, a public
examination taken at the end of Secondary Year Five (Ministry of Education
Malaysia 2013). With this, the Blueprint envisages that after three years
of schooling, every child will achieve 100 per cent basic literacy in Malay
and English and by the end of Secondary Year Five, 90 per cent of the
students will score a minimum of a Credit in both languages in the SPM
examination (Ministry of Education Malaysia 2013).
The MBMMBI policy has clearly engaged the Malay language in
a diglossic relationship with English. The question then is: Will this