Language education in Singapore

Singapore embraces an English-based bilingual education system. Students are taught subject-matter curriculum with English as the medium of instruction, while the official mother tongue of each student - Mandarin Chinese for Chinese, Malay for Malays and Tamil for South Indians – is taught as a second language.^[1] Additionally, Higher Mother Tongue (HMT) is offered as an additional and optional examinable subject to those with the interest and ability to handle the higher standards demanded by HMT. The content taught to students in HMT is of a higher level of difficulty and is more in-depth so as to help students achieve a higher proficiency in their respective mother tongues. The choice to take up HMT is offered to students in the Primary and Secondary level. Thereafter, in junior colleges, students who took HMT at the secondary level have the choice to opt out of mother tongue classes entirely. Campaigns by the government to encourage the use of official languages instead of home languages (e.g. other Chinese varieties) have been largely successful, although English seems to be becoming the dominant language in most homes.^[2] To date, many campaigns and programmes have been launched to promote the learning and use of mother tongue languages in Singapore. High ability students may take a third language if they choose to do so.

The language education in Singapore has been a controversial topic in Singapore - although Singaporeans are becoming increasingly English-dominant speakers, many have not achieved a good grasp of their mother tongue. This results a separate controversy regarding the assigned weightage of mother tongue in major examinations such as the PSLE and GCE Ordinary Level as parents worry that children who are taught English as a first language and who are brought up in English-speaking families are at a disadvantage for not knowing their mother tongue well.^[3]