Annual report on Brunei / Colonial Office.

  • Colonial Office
Date:
[1951]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Annual report on Brunei / Colonial Office. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    39/94 page 33
    The first pupils to enter this school were Malay school children who had been studying English under the State Educa¬ tion Officer for about a year. It is considered that these pupils will be ready to enter a grade equal to the seventh year (Standard V) English school reckoning, in January 1953. In January, when the school re-opens this class will receive ten other students who have spent one year in the English section of the Batu Lintang Training Centre. These ten, incidentally, began to study English at the same time as the other nine and were together with them in the original class before proceeding to Batu Lintang. It may be appropriate here to outline the Education Depart¬ ment's immediate plans in respect of Government English schools. The Brunei Town School will start a new year with two transfer classes: ‘Transfer Class I’ and ‘Transfer Class IF. ‘Transfer Class IF will be constituted as indicated above; but ‘Transfer Class I' will be a new class and will receive children who just passed Standard IV in a vernacular school. It will include both Malay and Chinese pupils. All these children will have had at least twelve months tuition in English in their previous schools. The Kuala Belait Government English School, already referred to in this report, will be similarly constituted, i.e. it will commence with a ‘Transfer Class F which will receive pupils from both Malav and Chinese schools in the Kuala Belait-Seria area. It may be remarked here, that while the medium of instruction in these Government Schools will be English, instruction in the mother tongue of the pupils, Malav and Chinese, will continue and be taught as second languages respectively. This venture is in the nature of an experiment this year, and it is hoped next year to expand the scheme and the number of entrants will be in¬ creased. The main difficulty, in connection with the opening of such schools, is the non-availability of qualified and trained teachers in sufficient numbers. Recruitment of teachers, in fact, especially trained teachers, is getting progressively difficult and will continue so as the demand for them increases in Malaya and Singapore. There is, it may be said, no local source of supply. The opening, therefore, of such schools, in fact, of any type of English school is, at the present time, a hazardous enterprise, as such ventures must be undertaken without the certainty of obtaining sufficient teachers, either to open them or to meet the requirements of normal future expansion and continuity. One is reminded here of an extract from an address recently given by ^ prominent educationist in Singapore, wherein he stated, “An adequate supply of well-trained teachers is the first necessity in any improvement or expansion of educational facilities’'. there are other matters, however, which must be considered in connection with this type of school. One is the very impor¬ tant consideration as to the extent such schools should be made available; and again, what repercussions they would have in respect of the languages and cultures of the two main racial groups in Brunei, i.e. the indigenous faces and the Chinese. There is also the consideration of the impact upon the economy of the State if all children went direct to English schools. Again, it is felt
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