Less exam-orientated education

Less exam-orientated education

It would be a relief to many parents reading your report (The STAR, April 19) ‘Less exam-oriented education under new UPSR curriculum’. This is definitely good news and a welcomed move proposed by the Ministry of Education. Truly, this decision will definitely solve many unnecessary headaches and heartaches of parents, teachers and school administrators.

As argued by many parents, the evaluation should be holistic and all encompassing characteristics, which should include the conduct and character of a child. We should not award an A to a child if he or she obtains good grades in exams only. It should be a wholesome evaluation. The wholesome development of a child should include among other things, physical development, emotional development, social development, moral development, and of course intellectual development.

Today’s evaluation is purely based on intellectual development, and less of the other developments. The Ministry with the assistance of various experts in these fields should work out effective and acceptable assessments to evaluate a child.

We must be always reminded that examination is just one way of assessing a child. As proposed, the Ministry will engage many approaches to ascertain the final evaluation of a child in Year 6. The report says UPSR examination will carry a weightage of 30% of the total assessment. The rest of marks will come from psycho-metrics tests, school-based assessments, weekly and monthly tests, and extra-curricular activities and sports. It is interesting to note that the extra-curricular activities will be incorporated in the evaluation of a child.

The only fear in school based assessments of a child is the class teacher may or tempted to give a biased or unfair evaluation of a child. It is sometimes normal for a human being to be prejudiced when making decisions. Perhaps besides class teachers, we should exploit other mechanisms or even a committee in making decisions in this school-based assessment. We do not want this school based assessments to become another issue when the new form of evaluation is introduced soon by the Ministry of Education.

We hope this form of assessment will be implemented as planned and thus paving the way for an effective and impartial means of evaluated a child in our nation.