Streamline The Post-SPM Years

 Streamline the Post-SPM Years

M. Bakri Musa

[Excerpts from my Qur’an, Hadith, and Hikayat:  Exercises In Critical Thinking, will resume next week.] 

April 27, 2025

 

The results of the Sijil Pelajaran Malaysia (SPM, or Malaysian Certificate of Education) examination taken by 403,000 students from December 2024 to February 2025 were released on April 24, 2025. The test is taken at the end of the 11^th school year.

            As usual, the media were inundated with profiles of those who had excelled. Little is written on or attention paid to those who did poorly or skipped the test entirely. Sad, as most of them are poor Malay students. Instead, much ink was devoted to the cartoonish depiction of the national flag in the report.

While SPM is the terminal examination for the national stream, it is not a matriculating test. As for standard-wise, as per the Program for International Student Assessment SPM is but Year 9 in the advanced world.

Those aspiring for university face bewildering choices post-SPM. These include matrikulasi, foundation courses, and traditional Sixth Form. These government programs cater primarily for Bumiputras, with only token non-Bumis included. These programs do not begin till July. With the long hiatus, considerable attrition of knowledge and good study habits occurs. There is also no central coordinating agency, hence duplicative application processes and interviews, consuming precious time, efforts, and money.

There are many private alternatives as with “twinning programs,” classes for GCE A-Level, International Baccalaureate (IB), and other foreign matriculating examinations. These typically start in January, right after SPM, thus ensuring smooth continuity. As these programs are expensive, Malay participation is low.

As SPM is for the national stream only, its victims are mostly Malays. The Chinese (and now increasingly also Malays) have their United Examination Certificate (UCE) taken at Year 12. It is a recognized matriculation worldwide. Perversely Malaysia does not.

As for those few non-Malays in the government programs, years ago I was in a seminar organized by the UMNO Club of New York/New Jersey where I debunked Mahathir’s half-baked genetic theory to explain Malay underachievement in education.

After the talk a young Malay student gingerly approached me. “Doctor, . . . ” he hesitated, “I like to believe you, but how do you explain . . . .” He went on to say that in his foundation class, while most of the students were Malays, the top scorers were mostly non-Malays.

I immediately sensed in him what Stanford psychologist Claude Steel termed the “burden of stereotype threat.” I asked that student what he did after sitting for his SPM. Nothing, as is typical with most Malays. Meanwhile his non-Malay classmates had attended expensive private classes in January. Later when they were selected for public programs, they were already six months ahead of their Malay classmates. Substantial head start in what typically would be a 12 to 18-month course.

The heavy curtain of self-doubt expressed in that student’s earlier enquiry lifted with his silence.

Since the 1970s, Malaysia has sent thousands (mostly Malays) overseas and at considerable cost to do essentially Sixth Form. Meanwhile my old school in Kuala Pilah with its mostly Malay students was begging to have its own Sixth Form but was thwarted by, what else, lack of funds. Worse, schools like Malay College later discontinued its Sixth Form, reducing that institution to a glorified middle school. Its students had to go elsewhere to matriculate. Only in 2016 did Malay College initiate an IB program. Even today that is not the preferred choice for the students.

Meanwhile back in the late 1990s, MARA Banting’s IB under its non-Bumiputra head was the top performer globally. Today that institution is back to the typical mediocre MARA mode.

The 1997 Asian Economic crisis knocked some sense into Malaysian officials, forcing them to reduce the number of students sent abroad for pre-university studies. 

Expanding Sixth Form would be far cheaper and more efficient. Stream it into academic (university bound), general, and vocational, as with the German system. Tweak it so those who do not perform well the first time could repeat it six months later, with the final certificate reflecting the better of the two scores.

As dysfunctional as SPM is, there is an even greater tragedy with the education of Malays. That is the religious stream. With indoctrination masquerading as education, that stream is the greatest destroyer of Malay brains. It does not have to be that way. Emulate the many exemplary American Church-related schools like Massachusetts’s Episcopalian Groton and the Jesuit’s Georgetown Prep.

With such daunting problems, the Minister of Education sees fit to introduce Khmer language. Such are the challenges facing Malaysian Education.