The Exam Sham?

By Syed Akbar Ali

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Well its that time of the year again:

• Best PMR results in four years
• 30,863 out of 439,456 candidates scored straight As (7% got 8As)
• fewer candidates this year (442,721 in 2009) more students scored straight As
• 5,825 rural students scoring straight As
• six subjects shown significant increase Bahasa Malaysia, English, Arabic, Mathematics, Science and Living Skills (agriculture).

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Maybe with more “hardwork”, we will achieve 100,000 students getting straight As in a few years. Then we can really get into the Guinness Book of World Records. Somehow I really don’t believe these figures are reflecting the true situation. I don’t think we are being fair to our children’s future, their parents and to our country.

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Firstly, can we please have the details for the exam scores? Is it a State secret? Is it an OSA or an ISA offence if the actual exam scores are made public? How many marks are needed to score a pass in the PMR for say ‘Bahasa Malaysia? What about English? What is the passing mark for Matematik? Is it a state secret? ISA? OSA? Why is it a State secret?

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And what are the minimum marks required to get an ‘A’ for all the eight subjects in the PMR? Untuk mendapat ‘A’ dalam Matematik, apakah markah minima yang perlu dicapai? Is there any type of discrimination at all in marking the exam papers? Can we have some simple honest answers?

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Folks just 10 years ago, it was the 20^th century. This is the 21^st century and its 2010 already. We are 10 years away from 2020. Our grandkids may see the 22^ndcentury – its not too far away. So can the Government please divulge full information about how these exam papers are graded? Bukan saja saya kurang yakin, but I think we are just fooling ourselves and damaging our childrens chances at a better future by not being forthright about how the exams are graded, the exam results and our entire education system.

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I have my doubts about the grading system not just for the PMR but for the SPM too.My wife and I work with socially challenged children in the care of some childrens’ shelters. We coached a child who was seriously deficient in school work, as most of these kids are. Straight ‘0’ scores or less than 10 marks in school exams were common. But come the PMR and our child passed all her eight subjects. We were happy but I must confess a little unexpectedly.

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The fact is our university graduates are becoming increasingly unemployable. If the Government and the GLCs do not give them a job, it will be difficult for them to find work elsewhere. And few of them can start businesses on their own (other than jual burger). Here is another true story – a graduate trainee was told to copy a ‘Price Tag’ and make twelve copies of it. It had to be written by hand. There was a small typo in the original tag, which had been scratched out and written over. The brilliant university grad produced twelve new tags, complete with the typo intact and rewritten over – twelve times !

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I think kita mabuk syok sendiri saja dapat. 8A, 21A, 75A tapi anak-anak kita masih tak boleh buat kerja yang simple, tak faham apa pun pasal hal dunia dan akan terus bergantung kepada Kerajaan untuk sara hidup.

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And what about other countries? Can we get some comparisons? The Singaporeans are cleverer than us (sorry but its true). In their ‘O’ Levels how many kids get straight As for all subjects – as a percentage of total students taking the ‘O’ Levels. 1000? 2,000? 10,000? How do we compare? If 40,000 or 50,000 of our kids can get straight As for all subjects because our kids are smarter, bagus lah. Very good. But how come our kids cannot even do simple jobs or even get proper jobs? And as a nation, Vietnam will soon be passing us in economic growth and development. Indonesia is getting organized too. Maybe with their 8As and 21As, our kids will one day look for jobs at jobstreetdotcomdotindon ?

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Jangan main-main atau permainkan masa depan generasi muda kita. We cannot lull the people with false hopes, false achievements, 30,000 straight As and so on when we know our young kids are way below par in the competitive sweepstakes. We have to benchmark our young kids with the best in the world. We cannot just adopt the jaguh kampong approach just to make people ‘feel good’ about the 30,000 straight As. We want to be a negara maju in just 10 years. We must start benchmarking ourselves with the negara maju starting from yesterday.

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Do the Negara maju produce 30,000 kids getting straight As? Here are Singapore's 'O' Level resutls (Jan 2010):

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O level results out: top student from CHIJ St. Nicholas Girls' School

11 Jan 2010

The GCE 'O' level results are out, and this year's top student is Lai Kai Rou from CHIJ St. Nicholas Girls' School, with 10 A1s. And the school had more reason to cheer. Of the 44 students in Singapore that scored 9 A1s, about one third or 13 students, were from the school.

Crescent Girls' School also produced a bumper crop, with 8 students scoring 9 A1s. Overall, some 37,400 students sat for the 'O' level examinations last year and about 81 percent scored 5 or more O level passes. This is similar to last year's 80.8 percent.

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So in Singapore only one student got 10As in the 'O' Levels results announced in January 2010. 44 other students got 9As in their 'O' Levels.

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(Folks I have deleted the reference from the New Daily Star - which is a Bangladeshi newspaper, and not a UK paper. Silap saya. But even in Bangladesh only TWO students achieved all As in the 'O' Level exams)

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In Malaysia we have hundreds of students if not thousands of students who get all As. Jadi siapa tipu siapa?

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What can I say : their students are not as smart as our kids.