JOHOR BARU, MALAYSIA - Most Chinese and Tamil schools want Mathematics and Science to be taught in their mother tongue.

This was what most parties from the schools who attended a recent roundtable meeting to discuss the use of English to teach the two subjects wanted.

Deputy Education Minister Datuk Dr Wee Ka Siong said that although most of them realised the importance of upgrading students' command of English, they felt there were other means to do so.

Schools too had taken efforts to increase the student's command in the international language by having extra lessons, he added.

Speaking to reporters after launching the Malaysian National Union of Headmasters' annual meeting here yesterday, Dr Wee said the ministry planned to increase the allowance of headmasters and assistant headmasters to attract more teachers to accept the positions.

Vacancies in both positions were among the major problems faced by Chinese primary schools nationwide, he said, adding that the RM60 monthly allowance for assistant headmasters was too low.

'In addition to that, they have long working hours which is up to 4pm; they might as well give tuition to earn that,' he said, adding that it was also difficult to get teachers who were willing to be transferred.

On the shortage of Chinese-language teachers, Dr Wee said the ministry did not have enough lecturers to train new teachers and that since teachers training colleges were upgraded to university status there was competition among universities to get qualified lecturers.

Dr Wee also said that it was not easy to hire lecturers from China to meet the demand as it was time-consuming to get them to familiarise with local terms.