Enrolment Rates of Secondary Students in Southeast Asian Third Languages and Expanding Access to Mainstream Schools

Mr Kenneth Tiong Boon Kiat asked the Minister for Education (a) how many secondary students currently take a Southeast Asian language as a third language; (b) what share of total third-language enrolment they form; (c) whether such languages can be offered within mainstream schools rather than only at the central language centre; and (d) whether access to Southeast Asian languages, such as Vietnamese, Bahasa Indonesia and Thai, will be expanded and made more accessible.

Currently, Southeast Asian languages that are offered as Third Language include Bahasa Indonesia (BI) and Malay (Special Programme) (MSP).

A total of about 2,300 secondary students currently offer BI or MSP, making up 36% of third language enrolment. Third languages are mostly offered in the Ministry of Education Language Centres, as the enrolment would be too small to form a class at the school level.

On top of the third languages offered, primary and secondary schools conduct Conversational Chinese and Malay (CCM) programmes as enrichment for students. CCM and Vietnamese online learning packages are also available on the Singapore Student Learning Space for any interested student to learn at their own pace.