I called this morning’s press conference to explain the Government’s thinking on the question of the mother tongue language or as MOE calls it “MTL”.
Let me first outline my key points before I explain the background and what this issue is about and what the way forward is. The first point is – Mother Tongue remains crucial. It is the foundation of our educational system, has been for many years and will continue to be, and we have no intentions of changing that.
Secondly, we are not reducing the weight of Mother Tongue languages at PSLE. I put that directly to address a lot of concerns that have arisen. That is not going to change but there are things we have to do to the examinations and to the teaching of mother tongue. We have to update the curriculum, we have to update the teaching, we have to update the examining of Mother Tongue languages because our language environment in Singapore is changing and we have to adapt to that. We have to fit the diverse backgrounds and aptitudes of our students in schools. That means we have to customize our content and it means we need more resources for Mother Tongue and particularly, it will mean we need more Mother Tongue teachers.