Chua: UPSR exam should be continued
Tawau, June 25, 2010: Member of Parliament for Tawau, Datuk Dr Chua Soon
Bui, agreed in principle that education should not be solely examinations
oriented.
Chua, who is also Sabah Progressive Party (SAPP) Vice President,
welcome the abolition of PMR examination but strongly felt that UPSR
should be continued as there should be some standardized assessment of the
students' academic achievements with respect to certain expected learning
outcomes after 6 years of primary education.
"At the moment, school principals, teachers and most parents are geared
towards academic achievement only under the present education system, in
most primary schools, be it national, Chinese, Tamil or mission schools.
"There is over emphasis on examination results both for individuals and
schools as a whole. It is evident that only high achievers are admitted
into elite schools.
"I agree that our primary education should focus on a wider scope,
encompassing e.g. character building, recreational and sport activities,
communication skills, inter relationship building, creativity and
innovation etc., rather than just the stereotyped "spoon-feeding teaching
and copycat learning".
"I propose that UPSR is to be continued but the grading of the
examination should be simplified to just Credit, Pass or Fail categories
only to avoid over-emphasis on examination results.
"The PMR examination can be abolished as the streaming to Science or
Art courses can be done with the school-based internal examination. SPM is
good enough to assess the academic performance of the students, after 5
years of secondary education, before they are admitted into tertiary
education institutions.
"If the Minister of Education, who is also the Deputy Prime Minister,
is sincere about reviewing education policies, he should also gather
public views on the changing of teaching medium for mathematics and
science from English to Bahasa Malaysia in secondary schools.
"If Malaysia wants to remain internationally competitive, to achieve
high-income nation status, and to become relevant in the international
economic market, It is with sincere wish that he should ask for public
views and review such an important policy. |
