What makes a school 'good' - rethinking SPM rankings

 

The release of the SPM 2025 results has brought with it a familiar mix of celebration, relief, and renewed debate.

On the face of it, the headline figures are encouraging. The national Grade Point Average (Gred Purata Kebangsaan, GPK) improved from 4.49 in 2024 to 4.42 in 2025, continuing a modest upward trend.

A total of 13,779 candidates obtained straight As (A+, A, and A-) out of a candidature of 395,740 students. There were also signs that the long-standing achievement gap between urban and rural candidates had narrowed slightly.

These are developments worth acknowledging. Any improvement at the system level, however incremental, represents the efforts of students, teachers, school leaders, and families across the country.

But once the initial congratulations subside, it is worth pausing to reflect on a different question: how do we interpret these results, and what conversations do they encourage us to have about the education system?

In recent days, social media and news portals have been awash with ranking tables listing the “best” schools based on SPM grade point averages.

A cursory glance at these lists reveals a striking pattern: they are overwhelmingly dominated by selective schools, particularly Sekolah Berasrama Penuh (SBP) and Mara Junior Science Colleges (MRSM).

This outcome is hardly surprising. By design, these schools admit students with strong academic profiles, typically at Form 1, and are resourced at levels far exceeding those of the average national secondary school (SMK).

The problem, however, is not that SBPs or MRSMs perform well. The problem lies in what we implicitly mean when we label schools as “best”.

When we focus narrowly on examination outcomes as outputs, without considering inputs, we risk drawing conclusions that are at best incomplete and at worst misleading.

Results can mislead

To illustrate the point, consider an analogy from outside education. A hospital that treats only low-risk patients will naturally report better recovery rates than one that handles the most complex and critical cases.

Likewise, a sports academy that selects the most talented teenagers will outperform one that trains novices. In neither case would we conclude that outcomes alone tell us everything about quality.

Schools are no different. A selective school that admits high-performing students at age 13 is expected to produce strong SPM results five years later. A non-selective SMK, by contrast, educates students with a wide range of academic backgrounds, learning needs, and socio-economic circumstances.

Comparing the two purely on final examination scores tells us very little about what each school actually contributes to students’ development.

This distinction is not new, nor is it unique to Malaysia. Many education systems have long recognised the limitations of judging schools by raw attainment alone.

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In England, for example, the Progress Eight measure evaluates schools based on how much progress students make between the end of primary school and their GCSE examinations, rather than on final results alone.

In Singapore, student performance has for decades been analysed by tracking cohorts from the Primary School Leaving Examination (PSLE) through to O-Levels, allowing policymakers to distinguish between prior attainment and the value added by schools, and to reward schools and students specifically based on progress, not merely attainment.

What makes a good school

These methodologies are hardly cutting edge, nor are they foolproof, but they nonetheless are closer to reality than the existing dominant narrative.

Once we adopt this lens, the definition of a “good” school begins to change. Is a good school one that produces the highest number of straight-A students, or one that helps students improve the most from where they started?

Is it one that serves a narrow academic elite exceptionally well, or one that lifts a broad cross-section of students to a solid standard of competence, confidence, and character?

This is not an argument against excellence, nor a call to downplay high achievement. Rather, it is a reminder that system-level improvement cannot be inferred from elite performance alone.

A small number of outstanding results can coexist with persistent weaknesses elsewhere, and it is worse if we end up diverting support away from struggling schools and towards only the high-performing ones, when we should be doing the opposite.

If our public conversation revolves primarily around top-ranked schools, we risk mistaking the performance of a minority for the health of the whole system.

Go from rankings to real impact

There are also deeper implications for policy. If we wish to evaluate schools fairly and improve them meaningfully, we need data systems that allow us to do more than report SPM outcomes in isolation.

This means developing the infrastructure to track students’ progress over time, contextualised by their prior attainment and backgrounds.

It also means being able to ask better questions: which schools are most effective at supporting lower-achieving students? Which are closing gaps, not just maintaining advantage? Where are students flourishing, not only academically, but also in their broader development as citizens and human beings, in light of the National Education Philosophy?

Without such data, we are left to infer quality from incomplete signals. Ranking tables may be easy to consume, share, and have headline value, but they simplify a complex reality into a single number.

In doing so, they can unintentionally narrow our collective focus to a small segment of schools and students, while diverting attention from the harder, more consequential work of improving education for the majority.

The media, too, has a role to play here. Reporting examination results is necessary and appropriate, but the way these results are framed matters. Stories that celebrate achievement while also providing context about selectivity, resources, and student intake help foster a more informed public discourse.

Ultimately, the question we should be asking is not simply whether SPM results are improving, but what kind of improvement we value.

A strong education system is not defined only by how high its highest performers can go, but by how widely it can raise standards, reduce disparities, and support young people to realise their potential in diverse ways. This is the system our country needs and deserves.

If we care about national progress, then celebrating success should go hand in hand with asking difficult questions about how that success is produced, for whom, and at what cost. Rethinking what we mean by a “good” school is a necessary step in that direction. - Mkini

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Tiong Ngee Derk is a Cambridge-trained educational researcher who cares about bridging practice and research, and improving education for the many, and not the few.

The views expressed here are those of the author/contributor and do not necessarily represent the views of MMKtT.