Top SPM scorers shouldn't have been left out of matriculation in first place, says Dr Wee

 

PETALING JAYA: Students who scored 10As in SPM should never have been left out of the matriculation intake in the first place if automatic admission had been promised, says Datuk Seri Dr Wee Ka Siong.

Responding to Deputy Education Minister Wong Kah Woh, the MCA president said the case of top scorers slipping through the net exposed weaknesses in how the policy was implemented.

“What happened to the automatic admission that was promised?” he wrote in a Facebook post on Tuesday (May 5).

Dr Wee pointed out that both the Malaysian Examinations Board and the matriculation division fall under the Education Ministry, with SPM results and students’ personal data linked in the system.

“From the release of the SPM results until May 1, there were more than 30 days. Are you saying internal coordination was still not up to mark?” he asked.

He stressed that it was an undisputed fact that 11 SPM top scorers with 10As were not automatically admitted in the first round. MCA Youth’s receipt of 11 complaints from students at the end of April, he added, involved “real cases, not fabrication”.

“A senior officer from the matriculation division contacted me yesterday to request the relevant details. I immediately provided them, as requested by the ministry, with the sole intention of helping the 11 students succeed in their appeals.

Dr Wee said the matriculation division later explained that the omissions were linked to a surge in successful reviews by the Malaysian Examinations Board, in which candidates with 8As or 9As had their results revised to 10As.

“There were as many as 284 such cases. The officer told me that all 11 students on the MCA Youth list had their appeals approved. I was relieved and issued a statement to inform the public of the outcome. What is wrong with that?” he said.

The former transport minister said the episode raised questions about the credibility of the Examinations Board, and asked whether the underlying problem lay in scoring errors, inconsistent marking or other factors.

Dr Wee pointed out that in 2002, the then government opened 10% of matriculation places to non-bumiputra students.

“Has the unity government led by Pakatan Harapan increased the 10% quota for non-bumiputra students? Under MCA, the figure went from zero to 10%. Under Pakatan, it has remained at 10%. Is this what you call a great leap forward?” he said.

“At best, one can only say that the number of non-bumiputra students is unchanged compared with 20 years ago.”

Dr Wee questioned the way the “automatic admission for 10A students” policy was applied, saying many candidates sat for only nine SPM subjects and were disadvantaged by a rigid 10-subject benchmark.

He noted that when the SPM 2025 results were released on 31 March, the Education director-general announced that 13,779 students had obtained A in all subjects. Wong later said 6,717 students with 10As would be automatically admitted to the matriculation programme.

“This means that 7,062 straight-A students who took nine subjects or fewer were eliminated. That is the brutal fact,” he said.

“In many remote schools, only nine subjects are offered. How are those students supposed to reach 10As?” he added, saying he had asked the ministry to provide data on how many candidates sat for only nine subjects over the past two years.

Dr Wee also questioned how the fixed non-bumiputra quota could cater to Chinese students who qualified as top scorers, noting that Chinese stsdents typically made up about 30% or more of the list of outstanding performers.

Dr Wee said Malaysians as a whole wanted a single, consistent standard for the automatic admission of straight-A students into the matriculation programme.

“There should be only one standard for all straight-A students to enter matriculation automatically. When you are handling public concerns, there should not be a second standard,” he said.

The issue first surfaced when the MCA Youth secretariat received 11 complaints from SPM top scorers with 10As who said they had not been offered places in the matriculation programme and sought the wing’s help.

The Education Ministry has insisted that all SPM candidates with 10As who applied for the matriculation programme have received offers under its automatic placement policy. According to Deputy Education Minister Wong Kah Woh, who wrote in a Facebook post on Tuesday (May 5), ministry records show that eligible students were processed and offered places through the existing system without the need for outside intervention.

Checks on 11 highlighted cases found that one student was offered a place on April 27, while the remaining 10 received offer notifications via SMS on April 29 after their upgraded results were processed following rechecks.

The ministry said these offers were part of a batch of 286 students whose results were revised to 10As, and maintained that the outcome was due to policy reforms and automatic procedures rather than ad hoc appeals.

 - Star