Education Ministry accused of dumbing down maths and science syllabus

KUALA LUMPUR, Dec 14 — Malaysia’s dismal performance in an international benchmarking study on mathematics and science tests has raised questions about whether standards in the education syllabus have been deliberately lowered.

Glaring comparisons have been made between the improving scores made by students here in the PMR and SPM public examinations which coincide with poorer performances against international peers.

Malaysia has consistently underperformed in maths and science over the past three TIMSS assessments. — Reuters pic

“One cannot help but to conclude that firstly, the Ministry of Education has been deliberately manipulating the maths and science standards for the PMR and SPM examinations to artificially increase the pass rate.  

“Secondly, it also raises the obvious question that our education syllabus has been ‘dumbed down’ so that more students will be able to do better for their examinations,” the DAP’s Tony Pua and Ong Kian Ming said in a joint statement today.

Pua is the DAP’s national publicity secretary while Ong is the party’s election strategist.

Malaysian students trail their global peers in mathematics and science tests, according to the results of two international benchmarking studies released this week, with secondary schoolers also showing a decline from their predecessors.

Malaysians scored an average 440 points in mathematics in Form Two ― the equivalent to eighth grade worldwide ― in the latest Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) 2011, lagging behind Korea, Singapore, Chinese Taipei, Hong Kong and Japan, which occupied the top five spots worldwide.

Malaysian 14-year-olds performed worse than their counterparts in Israel who chalked up 516 points, Lithuania (502) and Lebanon (449), but beat neighbouring Thailand, which scored 427 points on tests by a narrow margin.

In science, Malaysians scored 426 points, tying with Syria and just pipping Palestine, Georgia and Oman, which totted up 420 points each in the tests.

They were bested by top scorer Singapore (590), Chinese Taipei (564), Korea (560), Japan (558), Israel (516), Kazakhstan (490) and Thailand (451).

The average score in the TIMSS is benchmarked at 500 points, with countries scoring above that considered to have improved their performance in the two subjects while those falling below that mark are regarded as underperformers.

TIMSS is a four-year global assessment of the mathematics and science knowledge of fourth and eighth graders worldwide, or Standard Four and Form Two according to Malaysia’s education system.

However, Malaysian students were graded only at the secondary level in the survey.

The TIMSS showed that Malaysia has consistently underperformed over the past three assessments in the two subjects considered necessary in the country’s race to break into the ranks of high-income nations.

In 2007, the average Malaysian 14-year-old scored 474 points in mathematics and 471 points in science in the TIMSS survey.

And in 1999, the average score for mathematics stood at 519 points and 492 points for science.

But Pua and Ong point out that “surprisingly our students continue to score better results annually for their mathematics and science examinations for the PMR and SPM papers.”

They said that the PMR results over the years, as measured by the Average National Grade (or GPN), have been steadily improving from 2.83 in 2008 to 2.78 in 2009 to 2.74 in 2010 and mostly recently to 2.71 in 2011.  

More specifically, those obtaining As in mathematics increased from 26.7 per cent in 2010 to 28.9 per cent in 2011 and those obtaining As in science increased from 18.5 per cent in 2010 to 21.7 per cent in 2011, the two men said.

“At the same time, our SPM results in 2011 was reported to have been the best recorded in five years with the overall National Average Grade improving from 5.19 in 2010 to 5.04 in 2011,” they said.

They suggested there was a deliberate attempt to dumb down the syllabus and lower the passing marks for the examination subjects and that this was a key reason for the declining standard of the education system.  

“The Ministry of Education has over the years simplified the syllabus and lowered passing marks in order to give the perception of improving performance, which is measured by the number of passes and As achieved in these examinations.

“The obvious outcome to such a skewed education policy is that our Malaysian young will learn less in school, while needing to know and understand even less to secure a pass or obtain an A in the examinations.  

“This saddening outcome is now proven by the TIMSS, which showed how Malaysia is a country where its students suffer from the fastest declining standards for both mathematics and science.”