FINALLY, the Ministry of Education (MOE) has decided to abolish the Ujian Penilaian Sekolah Rendah (UPSR). After much stumbling in coping with the ever-changing circumstances caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, few announcements made by the ministry are as well liked as the abolition of the large-scale assessment for primary school leavers.

For too long, the examination has become the cart that our society put before the horse and was often allowed to dictate school policies, teaching approaches and even children’s free time at home. Worst of all, its outcomes have been misconstrued as the quintessential definition of success in learning.

But is this the solution to the problems that our students and schools are facing now?

Don’t get me wrong. I do support the abolition of UPSR, but not as the solution to exam-oriented education the way our education system is, for I don’t believe it is the right answer. But rather because the exam papers intended for this year’s cohort were written before the disruption of schooling by the pandemic. 

With the disruptions, these measuring instruments are rendered invalid, hence have become unreliable, inaccurate and unfair to use.

Secondly, our schoolchildren are experiencing the greatest disruption to their learning, at a length and scale never seen by other generations before. 

To impose high-risk public exams on them is to inflict further psychological harm. However, that doesn’t mean to say that cancellation of exams has no negative implications. 

Examination is a measuring tool. Although it should not be the only instrument we use to assess learning, it is, nonetheless, an important one that can provide information for the improvement of not only learning but also teaching, education management and research when used properly. Let me explain why.

To many of us, formulating an exam paper appears to be a simple and direct process of hiring a group of expert item writers to churn out questions according to its format. But the truth is, for all large-scale exams, item writing has to meet a set of specific criteria, especially a scientific one, in order for them to become a fair and just instrument fit to serve its purpose.

Each item has to have a clear objective and scope that align with the curricular objectives (for example, to apply the concept of probability in predicting the ratio of phenotype in trait inheritance), which will then allow examiners to report their general observations in the following manner:

“The theme of this question was macrophages, from Topic 11 of the syllabus, with subject material from Topics 1, 2, 3, 4 and 6 included. Answers to this question were generally very good, although (c) proved challenging for most who responded with recalled knowledge rather than applying their knowledge to solve a problem.” – Cambridge International AS and A Level 9700 Biology June 2016 Principal Examiner Report for Teachers.

“This question uses the results of a study on the trophic layers and the food web of two ecosystems to test candidates’ understanding of and the ability to apply the concepts of structure, function and energy flow of an ecosystem. From the candidates’ responses to sub-question (b), it shows that many candidates could not summarise the findings of the study well. Although most could point out the decline in the number of trophic levels, only a few cited given data as evidence. Generally, candidates are not good at making inference. Most candidates stated their answer without giving reasons and failed to link the implication of the shortening of the food chain to the extinction of species. Many candidates claimed that the reduction of species is due to ecological damage, environmental pollution, etc. without giving evidence provided in the study.” – UEC Biology 2008 Examiner Report.

Most importantly, in large scale examination, each paper must have its reliability, differentiability and difficulty measured, and its validity examined and approved by subject matter experts before its administration, so that the scores can be processed and analysed using statistical tools to draw valid inferences and conclusions. 

As such, each exam score is just a raw datum. Collectively, they can be translated into central tendencies, range, standard scores, standard errors, standard deviation and so on, which allows us to run inferential statistical analyses. It is for this reason, that international large-scale assessments, such as Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) and Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS), can generate information and draw powerful conclusions such as:

“In Malaysia, 54% of students attained at least Level 2 proficiency in reading (OECD average: 77%). At a minimum, these students can identify the main idea in a text of moderate length, find information based on explicit, though sometimes complex criteria, and can reflect on the purpose and form of texts when explicitly directed to do so.” 

“In Malaysia, 2% of students scored at Level 5 or higher in mathematics (OECD average: 11%). Six Asian countries and economies had the largest shares of students who did so: Beijing, Shanghai, Jiangsu and Zhejiang (China) (44%), Singapore (37%), Hong Kong (China) (29%), Macau (China) (28%), Chinese Taipei (23%) and Korea (21%). These students can model complex situations mathematically and can select, compare and evaluate appropriate problem-solving strategies for dealing with them.” – Country (Malaysia) Note, Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) Results From PISA 2018.

When Germany first received their results in PISA in 2001, its education experts were shocked out of their comfort. It revealed that the average performance by their students was much lower than their expectation and that there was inequality in their general education system, with students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds (such as the immigrants) facing more difficulty in learning than their counterparts.

As a reaction, Germany introduced many reforms targeted particularly at those underprivileged students in an attempt to equalise the system.

Similar responses from some other countries have been reported by Andres Sandoval-Hernandez, former head of the research and analysis unit at the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement. 

According to his observations, Iceland and Japan increased teaching hours for mathematics and science instruction at the elementary level, Singapore developed teaching resources to enhance cognitive and meta-cognitive skills and Australia introduced compensatory programmes to address gender and socioeconomic effects on student achievement.

In the case of Malaysia, we could have used the outcome of these large-scale assessments to inform the decision on high-impact policies, such as English for mathematics and science, instead of relying on one man’s vision.

Large-scale examination is not the reason why our system has become exam-oriented. It is our attitude towards examination and lack of will to change or challenge this attitude that have contributed to the formation of this undesirable culture.

As mentioned before, I still support the abolition of UPSR. But many issues remain unresolved now that the public exam is scrapped. Are our schools ready to conduct school-based assessment effectively and efficiently now that it has become the main approach to assess student learning and achievement?

Will the practice stay true to its intended purpose and not mutate into a different variant of exam-oriented education?

Most importantly, at this juncture, while our students have lost so much learning and we are still left in the dark about the seriousness of damage, don’t we need more large-scale data and information to help inform our national education policies as we are steering through the storm? I, for one, cannot be certain.

We can do without UPSR, but I don’t think we can do without large-scale data and information that are reliable and valid. For they constitute the objective evidence that can be used for informing national education policy as an essential element of good governance, especially now.

More than ever, we need to understand the nature of examination and to see it as it is, use it as it is. It’s not the exam, it’s our attitude towards the exams that is the problem.

Reducing it to the scapegoat, which we can conveniently blame for the exam-oriented education we have, will not solve the problem. Use it wisely and properly will. – May 10, 2021.

* Chan Yit Fei is a founding member of Agora Society. He is a cellist and educator by profession, and a biotechnologist by training. He writes to learn and to think, and most importantly, to force himself to finish reading books that would otherwise not see much of the light of day.

* 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.