The impact of the bilingual policy differs amongst students from the various ethnic groups. For the Chinese, when the policy was first implemented, many students found themselves struggling with two foreign languages: English and Mandarin. Even though several different Chinese varieties were widely spoken at home, they were excluded from the classroom as it was felt that they would be an "impediment to learning Chinese". Today, although Mandarin is widely spoken, proficiency in second languages has declined. In response to these falling standards, several revisions have been made to the education system. These include the introduction of the Mother Tongue "B" syllabus and the now-defunct EM3 stream, in both of which Mother Tongue is taught at a level lower than the mainstream standard. In the case of Mandarin, Chinese students would study Chinese "B".