Book Description

Chinese education in Malaysia has come a long way since the nineteenth century. The Chinese had brought their traditional mode of education to Malaya, which was modernised following new political developments in China. The postcolonial period saw the restructuring of education, which resulted in the acceptance of Chinese primary schools into the national educational system and the conversion of Chinese secondary schools to national-medium schools. Despite this, the development of these schools, especially the Chinese primary schools, has not been fully supported by the government and there are also measures that could lead to a change in their character. Meanwhile, the development of Independent Chinese Secondary Schools has been lacklustre and it was only in the early 2000s that they began to show impressive growth. But the strong emergence of international schools beginning in the mid-1990s might pose a threat to this impressive growth. As for the aspirations of the Chinese educationists to establish a Chinese institution of higher learning since the second half of the 1960s, their efforts were blocked by the government until the 1990s when they managed to establish a private college to create a complete system of Chinese education in Malaysia. This book is essential reading for anyone hoping to study the development of the Malaysian Chinese education system in greater detail.