Ending this obsession with As

MALAYSIANS are avid record breakers. Anything and everything can be surmounted. Any record can be bettered. Malaysia boleh, after all.

By Chok Suat Ling (NST)

We already have lemang one kilometre in length in the record books? No problem, we can make another measuring 2km. Someone managed to gather 300 people to stir a vat of dodol? Easy, we could just gather 500 people to do the same.

Nur Amalina Che Bakri scored 17 As in Sijil Pelajaran Malaysia? That was surpassed without too much difficulty. Azali Azlan did it with 21 As in 2007. What's next? 30 As? 35? 50? It is not difficult to imagine that there would be students willing to go that far, even at the expense of a social life and their sanity.

It appears that the most enviable record to break these days is to surpass the previous person with the most As in what has always been the sole measure of a student's worth — performance in public examinations.

Thus, it would be prudent, even wise, to cap the number of subjects students can take for SPM. Why the Education Ministry wants to impose a 10-subject limit is slightly off the mark, however. It has to be done not so much to end the controversy surrounding Public Service Department scholarships, but more to stop this deleterious obsession with breaking the illustrious record of As just because it is there to be broken.

With the situation having deteriorated this much in a mere eight years since the open certification system was introduced, urgent measures are called for. When the system was introduced for SPM in 2001, the objective was to lessen the burden of students, and to get them and the rest of society to see that examinations are not, and should not be, the sole yardstick of a student's worth.

There are no aggregates under the system, and students are not categorised under Grades One, Two or Three, as they were in the past. The ministry hoped this would make it difficult for comparisons to be made, and ease the dizzying level of competition among students and schools.

The system also gives students more flexibility in their choice of subjects. They are free to study the subjects they want, based on their interests and talents, and at their own pace and time.

All they need do is take the six core subjects and later, if they want to, take the other subjects on their own as private candidates.

In many respects, the open certification system is similar to that of the British General Certificate of Secondary Education or GCSE examinations. It represented a significant milestone in the development of the country's education system; a coming of age, as it were.

But Malaysian students and parents are obviously not ready to leave the security of their adolescent cocoons, nor are they prepared to change the way they perceive examinations. Instead of taking advantage of this flexibility to make their learning experience less burdensome, as was the ministry's intention, many choose instead to take a mind-blowing number of subjects in a year. This completely negates the reason for the open certificate's existence.

The Malaysian examination system has been tweaked and reviewed numerous times, but what seems as much in need of an overhaul is the attitudes of students — and even more so their parents, many of whom seem overzealous to the point of hysteria when it comes to their children's education.

This attitude resulted in the ministry scrapping the Phase One Assessment Test (Penilaian Tahap Satu) in 2001, just five years after it was introduced. The test, which enabled pupils to be promoted from Year Three to Five, had to be done away with for several reasons, prominent among which was the behaviour of parents.

As the ministry said in a statement: "We found that pupils taking PTS were subjected to unnecessary pressure by their parents who viewed it as a status symbol when their child was promoted. On the other hand, pupils who did not perform well were mentally traumatised as they were made to feel like failures."

The PTS tested pupils' verbal and thinking skills. It was not something they were required to study — or could have even if they wanted to. But parents sent their children for PTS tuition anyway, over and above piano, swimming and ukulele lessons.

Even the proposed school-based assessment system, which would certainly make the Malaysian education system less exam-oriented, is facing unexpected resistance among parents.

They worry that there may be favouritism if school exams are decentralised, or that teachers may give preferred students higher marks. An assurance that marks will be verified by supervisors or external examiners has not been enough to allay their fears.

What can the ministry do if parents insist on pushing their children to heights unimaginable and impossible? For a start, it can do what it has said it will do: limit to 10, or even fewer, the number of subjects a student can take for the SPM.

Eight would do nicely for students at national schools, and nine for those in vernacular schools, as it was in "those days" when the only record students wanted to break was that longstanding one held by the school sprinter in the 100-metre race.