Manyin said the committee would consist of experts from non-governmental organisations, universities and teachers’ training institutes.

He said they would need to monitor teachers who would be teaching year one pupils both the subjects in English at least for the first six months beginning Jan 1.

“Although 2,853 primary school Science and Mathematics teachers have been trained, we are still worried because these teachers had been teaching in Bahasa Malaysia for many years.

“It’s not easy to switch, so we are going to do continuous monitoring,” he said.

Manyin said if the programme failed, “our children will be doomed to be in the doldrums of scientific advancement”.

He said the monitoring committee would help detect any problem quickly so that remedial action could be taken early.