In the 1950s, there had been four initial proposals for developing the national education system such as below:
- Barnes Report and its modification known as Ordinance Report
- Fenn-Wu Report
- Razak Report, which was a compromise between the two reports above
The Barnes proposal was implemented through the 1952 Education Ordinance amidst Chinese protests. In 1956, the Razak Report was adopted by the Malayan government as the education framework for independent Malaya. The Razak Report called for a national school system consisting of Malay, English, Chinese and Tamil-medium schools at the primary level, and Malay and English-medium schools at the secondary schools, with a uniform national curriculum regardless of the medium of instruction. Malay-medium schools would be known as "national", while other languages schools would be known as "national-type".
In the early years following the 1957 Malaysian Independence Act, existing Chinese, Tamil and mission schools accepted government funding and were allowed to retain their medium of instructions on the condition that they adopt the national curriculum. Chinese secondary schools were given the options of accepting government funding and change into English national-type schools or remain Chinese and private without government funding. Most of the schools accepted the change, although a few rejected the offer and came to be known as Chinese independent high schools.
Shortly after the change, some of the national-type schools reestablished their Chinese independent high school branches. All remaining nationalised schools underwent a gradual implementation of Malay as the main medium of education in the 1970s, though English remained a compulsory subject in their syllabus.
