“I’m sorry to say, our education policy is a (constant) flip-flop,” Abang Johari said when officiating the Affin Bank Market Outlook 2024 programme at Menara Affin.

“Sometimes (when) a new minister takes over, a certain policy is taken. (Then when) the next minister comes, it changes.”

Defending the Sarawak government’s stand on using English in education, he also repeated his call for Malaysians to master both English and Malay.

“Some people say, ‘What’s with Sarawak showing off in English?’

“But this is important, you need to acknowledge the fact that you need English. If you want to master digital devices, you have to read manuals, (and) most manuals are in English.”

Last November, Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim emphasised the need for the national education system to improve students’ mastery of English starting this year.

“A child of Malaysia must master Malay. At the same time, all our children, especially at national schools, must be given focus so that their mastery of English is much better than it is now, so that they can at least be bilingual,” he had said.

In the same month, an education activist said Malaysia’s decision to scrap English medium schools to advance the use of Malay in education had come at a cost to the country.

Parent Action Group for Education Malaysia (PAGE) chair Noor Azimah Abdul Rahim said that in 2003, then prime minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad introduced the teaching and learning of science and mathematics in English (PPSMI).

Nine years later, Muhyiddin Yassin, deputy prime minister at the time, reversed the decision. In 2016, Muhyiddin introduced a dual language programme (DLP) allowing parents to determine which language they wanted science and mathematics to be taught to their children.

However, Azimah said the DLP uptake has been poor, with only around 1,000 schools nationwide participating. Currently, only schools in Sarawak teach mathematics and science entirely in English.