By Adrian Lim
KUCHING, Jan 6: Democratic Action Party (DAP) Sarawak chairman Chong Chieng Jen is urging the Education Ministry to quickly come up with alternative measures for students sitting for the Form Five Sijil Pelajaran Malaysia (SPM) examination.
Chong believed that the current high number of Covid-19 cases in the country is not safe for students to sit for the SPM exam on February 22, 2021.
“While the SPM examinations is an important method of assessing the knowledge of the students, there are also other assessment methods that can be adopted.
“Even the international examinations like the IGCSE (International General Certificate of Secondary Education), O Level and A Level examinations in May and June 2020 were canceled because of the Covid-19 pandemic.
“If the boards of such international examinations can cancel the examinations and substitute other assessment methods with examinations, I can’t see why the MOE (Ministry of Education) of Malaysia cannot formulate other tests to substitute the 2020 SPM exams for the issuance of the SPM certificates,” he said in a press statement today.
Chong noted that the country is going through an extraordinary time due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
Hence, he urges the Education Ministry to come up with measures to cope with the situation without putting the secondary school students at great risk.
Chong who is also Stampin MP noted that the Education Ministry has postponed the SPM examination twice.
The first postponement was for the SPM exam to be held from January 6 to February 9 and the second postponement was for the examination to be held from February 22.
He opined that further postponement of the SPM examination is not the solution for the assessment of Form Five students.
Chong who is also a Kota Sentosa assemblyman opined that forcing SPM students to go to the exam halls to sit through the exams in the current Covid-19 pandemic is also not the solution.
As such, Chong called upon the Education Ministry to quickly implement an alternative assessment measure so that the students can proceed with their further study without unnecessary delays and hardship. —DayakDaily
