Foong Phui Si, information secretary of the party’s associates wing, called for government action to control the “little Napoleons” in school managements who blocked the holding of Tamil and Mandarin classes.

She said the bureau’s observations had shown that many national primary schools offered only Arabic classes, ignoring Mandarin and Tamil, supposedly from a lack of student interest and a shortage of teachers.

“In our opinion, a lack of teaching staff is not reasonable because the Chinese and Indian communities are the second and third largest communities in Malaysia,” she said.

A lack of student interest indicated a failure on the part of school management to encourage students to learn languages beyond their mother tongues.

“Clearly, the failure of national primary schools in offering Mandarin and Tamil is due to the refusal of the school management to emphasise these two languages,” said Foong.

“The government must control the ‘little Napoleons’ at the school management level who defy the education ministry’s instructions by giving a thousand and one reasons not to offer these languages in schools.”

Foong said more Chinese and Indian teachers needed to be hired, and suggested that retired Chinese and Tamil school teachers be given the opportunity to teach.

Her comments came in response to an announcement by the education minister, Radzi Jidin, that the government had plans to expand the number of language subjects offered at national primary schools.

Radzi said Mandarin, Tamil and Arabic were offered in primary schools as “communicational” language subjects.

Foong said the ministry must emphasise the successful learning of Arabic, Mandarin and Tamil before offering additional languages.

“What’s the point of offering more languages if we can’t even succeed in what we have now?” she said.