Will education ministry act over faulty question in SPM?

Bernama pic.

As I pen this letter today, the day of the penultimate paper for the SPM Science stream students, I cannot help but speak out for them regarding a matter that may seem trivial to some.

It is about a faulty question in the SPM and how the education ministry, in particular the Examinations Board, will seek to address the issue (if they wish to).

Note that I attached a caveat at the end of my query above. In the past, in my capacity as a full-time private tutor who has been teaching the Pure Science subjects since 1994 in Penang, I had pointed out errors in the SPM Chemistry objective questions and also in Physics. Yet, the reply was always nonchalant, to say the least, which is “tiada kesilapan dalam soalan”.

So, in this environment of “Malaysia Baru” and accountability, I plead to the good offices of the persons responsible to reexamine Q47 of the just concluded SPM Biology Paper 1 2018.

For one who knows his or her genetic basics, a sex-linked or X-linked disease like colour blindness can show two genotypes if you are a “normal” female.

The SPM question that is said to be faulty.

Hence this question throws two sets of combination for the Generation 2, depending if it was homozygous dominant or heterozygous for the female Q in the diagram.

Ultimately, the two possible combinations can match three of the four offered choices from A to D.

I sincerely hope that a fair decision can be made by the Examinations Board on how the eventual marking of this question is to be done. Is there a mechanism to accept three answers? Or will the faulty question be done away with and the paper is scored to a total of 49 instead of the usual 50 objective questions?

A reply from the education ministry will be most appreciated, not only for me but definitely for the students who seek an answer to their predicament.

Boo Soon Yew is an FMT Reader.