The Parent Action Group for Education Malaysia (Page) said the national language can be safeguarded even with the reintroduction of English medium schools.

"To ensure that the Malay language is not relegated, insist that students who enrol in English-medium schools first attain the national average score for Bahasa Malaysia," said Page chairperson Noor Azimah Abdul Rahim.

Noor Azimah said such schools were necessary to produce highly-skilled English language teachers who are desperately needed.

"We have to accept the fact that Malay-medium schools do not produce the best English language teachers.

"Our past expenditure on the native speaker programmes has been expensive, although effective, is unsustainable," she said.

She was responding to a survey published by Singapore's Iseas-Yusof Ishak Institute which found a majority of Johoreans, or 82 percent of the 2,011 respondents, supported bringing back English-medium schools...