PUPILS in government schools will no longer be placed in classes according to their academic achievements starting from the 2019 academic year, according to a directive from the Education Ministry.

Director-general of education Dr Amin Senin said the decision was made to avoid a widening academic gap between pupils, according to Berita Harian.

“We have never encouraged schools to practise streaming according to academic achievements, but they do it to achieve their KPIs,” he was quoted as saying.

Under the new ruling, schools will be motivated to work on increasing the school average grade, which will become a main key performance indicator.

“There will no longer be a need to separate the children. In fact, we will group them into groups of pupils with different strengths, with different levels of achievements so they can help each other.” – December 27, 2017.