Call for transparency in SPM grading

Stakeholders can then suggest improvements, says PAGE.

The grading system for local examinations is classified under the Official Secrets Act. (Bernama pic)

PETALING JAYA: The Parent Action Group for Education (PAGE) has urged the government to lift the veil of secrecy on the system of grading used for the Sijil Pelajaran Malaysia (SPM).

Speaking to FMT, PAGE secretary Tunku Munawirah Putra claimed that Malaysia’s education system was suffering from a trust deficit and said a good start towards transparency would be to publicise the SPM grading system.

Stakeholders could then give their input towards improving the system, she added.

She noted allegations made through the years by various quarters that the marking standard was low for certain papers, including English and Additional Mathematics.

Tunku Munawirah Putra.

The grading system is classified under the Official Secrets Act.

PKR vice-president Nurul Izzah Anwar once questioned the credibility of the previous government’s statement that the SPM results were encouraging, saying the secrecy rendered the claim meaningless.

FMT spoke to several educationists about the issue, and two of them – Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia academic Teo Kok Seong and National Union of the Teaching Profession secretary-general Harry Tan – said they supported the secrecy.

Teo said it wasn’t normal practice in most parts of the world to publicise how examinations were graded. In most cases, he added, the grading would be “dynamic” in the sense that it would vary according to the average performance of students.

Teo Kok Seong.

Tan agreed with Teo and added: “The benchmarking is done by the public through the acceptance of our students into higher institutions of learning or when they seek work.”

But Teo also spoke of the need to make the SPM “less of an exam-oriented assessment” and more project-oriented.

Harry Tan.

Tan said co-curricular achievements should be incorporated into the SPM grading.

He also said students should be allowed to choose their streams or combinations of streams while they were still in Form 1 and given the option to change their minds in Form 3.

Explaining his idea of stream combinations, he said there should be no reason why a student could not choose a few science subjects and a few arts subjects or a few subjects from either stream and combine these with technical and vocational subjects.

Another educationist, Zakaria Kasa of the National Professors Council, suggested that the number of SPM subjects be limited to eight, with only Bahasa Malaysia, English, Mathematics and Science being compulsory. The other four could be chosen from among electives, he said.

Alternatively, he said, Malaysia could abandon the SPM and focus on the STPM or introduce a high school diploma. -FMT