ON April 28, Senior Minister for Education Mohd Radzi Md Jidin announced that Ujian Pencapaian Sekolah Rendah (UPSR) for Year 6 pupils will be abolished starting this year while Pentaksiran Tingkatan Tiga (PT3) for 2021 has been cancelled.

He also said UPSR will be replaced by an enhanced school-based assessment, and boarding school enrolment will be determined by the results of Pentaksiran Kemasukan Sekolah Khusus. Apart from that, as usual, no clear guideline for policy implementation is disclosed.

Facing the tsunami demands from parents to shut down schools as Malaysia is experiencing the fourth wave of Covid-19, the Education Ministry (MOE) passively and reactively announced the decision to abolish UPSR.

Nevertheless, we should praise MOE for its brave Covid-19-triggered decision to implement the years-long discussions and studies in moving towards assessment rather than examination-oriented education.

However, I criticise MOE for not being able to provide a proper guideline for affected students in continuing their education to Form 1 and Form 4.

The abolition of UPSR is indeed controversial. There are mixed reactions to the announcement. Some parents and teachers welcome the move while other parents blasted it, saying that abolishing the national benchmarking examination will make the children study for nothing.

The opposing group shares the view that the national examination serves as a key performance indicator to keep teachers committed to their teaching and motivate pupils to study hard.

A majority of these parents emphasise cognitive elements of education and are sceptical of teachers’ professionalism in conducting assessments.

In a country full of unfair policies, particularly in education, I fully understand where the concerns originate.

Perhaps our society needs more discussions on what education is about. In prehistory, adults trained the young on the values, knowledge and skills needed in their society. Education was achieved orally and through imitation in the pre-literate society.

Therefore, education is a process to facilitate the younger generation to acquire values, knowledge and skills and pass them on to the next generation.

Plato had shaped the first compulsory education model, in which he thought that an ideal city needs an ideal individual, and an ideal individual needs an ideal education.

Plato emphasized that an ideal individual should acquire knowledge and challenge the existing knowledge, creatively solving problems, work as a team in the community and seek solutions via communication.

One can easily find that the so-called 4Cs (critical thinking, creativity, collaboration and communication) have been there since ancient times to equip and train ideal individuals.

Mockery, we shout out loud on the 4Cs as the overuse of bandwagons in “21st century education”.

Plato’s ideas were popularised in the Renaissance age, culminating in the enlightenment, and eventually influenced the Prussian model, which requires a minor to attain a certain number of years in education, with the aim of preparing an ideal individual. This model serves as a framework for modern compulsory education, globally.

Back to the reality of Malaysia’s education. It is an open secret that there is a general practice, especially in the high-performing schools, where teachers creatively “steal” time from subjects that are not assessed on in UPSR, that is, physical education, art, music and so on, to enable focus to be given to exam subjects.

Similarly, the drawback of examination-oriented education is the focus on tested topics and, worse, merely concentrating on answering past years’ exam questions.

At most education workshops, the emphasis is on how to improve the students’ performance in national benchmarking examinations. Some ideas may be discussed, but they are merely focused on examinations.

MOE offers very little training to teachers in conducting proper teaching for individuals, despite how beautiful the national education philosophy has been crafted. A question must be asked, does this align with the Malaysian education philosophy?

Last but not least, the Malaysian Education Blueprint (MEB) 2013-2025 sets five outcomes to aspire the education system as a whole. The first three are: Equal access to education, which has the potential to develop his/her maximum potential; all children will have the opportunity to attain quality education; and equity in education for every child, regardless of geography, gender or socioeconomic background.

Every learner has a different progress curve, and thus not all students are good in examinations. Considering the three outcomes that are prioritised in the MEB, a national benchmarking examination at primary-level education will not achieve the targeted goal.

In the Education Act 1996, Malaysia’s compulsory education is set at 11 years with a similar goal to train ideal individuals, but rounds of unnecessary national benchmarking examinations in the early or mid-stage of education, that is, UPSR and PT3, will victimise those who are slow at the beginning stage.

Students who underperform at UPSR will very likely be assigned to classes that are ignored by teachers, as schools focus on selected top-performing students to excel in PT3 and Sijil Pelajaran Malaysia.

These students might feel abandoned by teachers and the school, and there is a high chance for them to opt for some unhealthy activities to justify their existence, such as Mat Rempit, take part in gangsterism, drug dealing and so on.

With all these examples, it clearly shows that unnecessary examinations distort the purpose of education, solely focusing on education instrumentalism.

I urge every one of us to think about education as a public good, and proactively tap into the golden opportunity of abolishing national benchmarking examinations at the early stage of education.

Additionally, we should take part in discussions to help the MOE in crafting a better education ecology, which instils self-esteem in every learner, so that they can utilise each strength to contribute to nation-building. – May 3, 2021.

* Chong Kok Boon is a member of Agora Society. He is a self-declared Peter Pan who advocates science in forging a more democratic and humane society.

* This is the opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of The Malaysian Insight. Article may be edited for brevity and clarity.