ENGLISH LANGUAGE POLICY

Running head: ENGLISH LANGUAGE POLICY
Educational Policy Issues of Singapore and South Korea
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Singapore’s Educational Bilingual Policy Issues
Singapore’s’ bilingual policy in the education sector has constantly been refined to meet the rapidly changing social and political atmospheres in the country. The bilingual policy especially in the education sector has its roots in the 1956 report by the All-Party Committee of the Legislative Assembly on Chinese Education. The policy is currently articulated in the 1978 Report on the Ministry of Education.
In this policy, English is given the priority as the basic language of instructions in the Singapore schools. This was a move aimed at raising the rates of proficiency of the Singaporeans in the English language thus improving their advantage in the communication as well as interaction with the rapidly growing global economy. Since Singapore is a country with different ethnic and cultural groups, English was seen as a perfect neutral language which will present no ethnic conflicts on why it was chosen as the basic medium of instructions. However, the local mother-tongues are compulsory and are preserved for values and cultural identities. In this context the students are assigned their respective local languages which include Chinese, Malay and Tami as well as non-Tamil Indian languages such as Bengali, Gujarati, Punjabi and Urdu (National Library, Singapore, 2009).
The introduction of the bilingual system of education was aimed at improving and harmonising the different curriculum and syllabuses that existed during the pre-independence Singapore. This continued even for the better part of the British colonial rule since most of the school were private. This meant that in most schools only the local languages were used a medium of communication. It was during this colonial period that government schools were developed to train and teach the student either in English or Malay. As the colonial government established itself, bilingual education became the chief policy in the education system for the racial integration as the country moved closer to independence. Several schools were brought under the colonial government control and this ensured that English achieved the aim of integrating the country into one uniform language in the education system (National Library, Singapore, 2009).
As the bilingual policy established ground in Singapore, students registering for primary English-medium schools increased form 50% to 90% in the 1970s. The Chinese medium schools began to expand on their English curriculum beyond the stipulated requirements of the government. It was in 1972 when the English language was given a double weight at Primary School Leaving Education. Since most of the student had their local languages different from English, this provided a difficulty in the management of the examinations. It was at this time tha...