The Deputy Education Minister claims that school-based evaluation is better than exams (STAR, 29 June 2010, School-based evaluation better, says Ministry). But is it?
Take the case of the oral English examination which used to be conducted nationwide in Form 3 and in Form 5 in the 1980s. Teachers were sent to other schools to assess the language proficiencies of students there in those days. This was scrapped and school-based assessments are conducted throughout the year by conscientious teachers who follow guidelines given by the Ministry of Education.
Yet, there are many discrepancies regarding how this evaluation is done in the classroom, if it is done at all. Some students read a text to the teacher only, while some have to read to the whole class. Some have to memorise a text and present it to the whole class. What is happening here is that teachers take it upon themselves to decide how the students should be assessed depending on the capabilities of the students. The evaluation is thus not standardized throughout the country. Yet the results will be taken into account for their final examinations at national level (either PMR or SPM).
The Deputy Education Minister further states that parents are too obsessed with As and that is why they spend thousands of ringgit to send their children for tuition. Aren’t the school-based evaluations going to be graded? What is to stop a parent from spending money to make sure that their childrens’ folios get good grades? Does he know that today’s kids, because of lack of time, have not only parents doing their folios for them, but they also copy from their seniors. Teachers are just pleased that students have got folios to produce when the deadline is reached.
Also the Deputy Education Minister should be informed that As are not the sole reason why students are sent for tuition classes. One very important reason is to keep them occupied so that they do not waste their time sleeping or playing computer games. Another reason could be that parents know their children are weak in the subject and the teachers in schools have no time to give their children personal coaching. Yet another reason is that going for tuition has become a culture of the Malaysian society.
The Deputy Education Minister goes on to assure parents that their children will be assessed at school level as his Ministry will monitor the situation. The question arises as to how they will be assessed. Evaluation and assessment would be left to the discretion of the teacher. A great amount of monitoring will definitely have to be carried out as even though there are many conscientious and dedicated teachers who go by the book, there are an equal number of lazy and callous teachers who will try to find the easy way out in every situation. The latter could implement open-book tests, record marks without having checked on the work of the students and even expect students to curry favour for higher marks.
We have all had bad experiences with exams but they have made us diligent and committed to want to improve our performance. Standardized nation-wide examinations are very necessary for separating the wheat from the chaff, to measure the performance of each individual student against his peers who come from different schools in different states in our 1Malaysia.
Maybe at this stage, the mindset of the policy-makers should be changed. On the one hand, they are now spearheading the issue of the abolishment of examinations. On the other hand, they have informed controlled schools that the children there cannot afford to fail their examinations. If children as young as nine years old (in Std 3) fail their examinations, they will be retained for a year and if they fail again, they will be kicked out of the controlled schools. What message are they trying to disseminate to the people of Malaysia concerning the issue of examinations?
That the policymakers see a need for a change regarding the issue of examinations is commendable, but abolishing them is definitely not the answer!
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