Another leak, UPSR pupils to resit English paper

Students will have to resit the UPSR English paper which has been leaked. – The Malaysian Insider pic by Afif Abd Halim, September 11, 2014.

The Education Ministry today announced that Year 6 pupils would have to resit their UPSR English paper following another leak.

Minister II Datuk Sei Idris Jusoh said that the leaks were discovered this morning.

This is the second UPSR paper that has been leaked after the ministry yesterday said that the Science paper which students were due to sit this morning would be postponed to September 30 after it was also leaked.

The Year 6 pupils sat their English papers 1 and 2 ‎earlier today.

Idris said students who sat the English paper with code 014/1 and 014/2 would have to re-sit the papers at a date which will be announced later on.

"‎Yesterday the Examinations Board made the decision to postpone the Science Paper to September 30," he told reporters at a press conference in Putrajaya today.

"Today, we also found that questions for English papers 1 and 2 ‎were also leaked. For this, the board will discuss when the pupils can retake the examination."

The English Paper 1 began at 10.30am today and ended at 11.20am‎ while Paper 2 was at 12.20pm until 1.35pm.

He said rumours that the UPSR Mathematics paper was also leaked would be investigated.

Idris said the leaks of both the Science and English papers were a serious issue and promised that action would be taken against the culprits.

‎"This never should have happened. We will conduct a thorough investigation into the matter and will take the harshest action possible against those who were responsible for the leaks," he added.

The minister said that postponing the examination to a much later date was to allow preparations to be made.

"The set (back-up) questions are there. But we have to print them and think about other logistics," he said.

There are 473,175 Year Six pupils sitting for the examination at 8,299 centres. There are also 51, 438 invigilators involved.

"Besides that, there are 382 vaults where these exam papers are kept. So this is why we couldn't have it sooner," Idris added.

He also announced that a "high-profile" independent committee ‎would be set up to look into the recurring problem of examination paper leaks and advise the ministry on actions to be taken.

"Because of the seriousness of the matter, we will set up a committee, which will give us their advice on what steps to take to ensure this does not happen."

"Since technology today is so advanced, we need to have a mechanism to overcome this challenge," he added.

- TMI