Assessment to replace UPSR and PMR

Proposal for the abolishment of two major public examinations – the Ujian Pencapaian Sekolah Rendah (UPSR) in Year Six and the Penilaian Menengah Rendah (PMR) in Form Three need to futher study and investigation from others party like school management, teacher society, parents and education professional.

Maybe this proposal is good but we need to consider many others factor like teacher skill, sofware & hardware equipment and etc. Nowadays, alot of parents give their children study in extra tuition class. I quite pity them who need to attend tuition class, music class and so on after they school class and do home work until midnight. My neighbour son who in secondary school and he always say boring during school class. He very look towards holiday school because no need to attend so many classes and do alot of homework. I thinking that is that our education sytem force their parents to do so or their parents "kia su" as singaporian always say?

Wednesday May 9, 2007 - The Star

PETALING JAYA: The Malaysian Examinations Syndicate (MES) has proposed the abolishment of two major public examinations – the Ujian Pencapaian Sekolah Rendah (UPSR) in Year Six and the Penilaian Menengah Rendah (PMR) in Form Three.

Its director Datuk Dr Adi Badiozaman Tuah said there would be no public examination at the primary and lower secondary levels following the proposed introduction of school-based assessment.

“If this is approved, the UPSR will be conducted for the last time in 2012 and the PMR in 2015,” he said.

The MES has proposed five forms of assessment for students in the national education system. These will be piloted in the 30 pioneer cluster schools next year. They are:

SCHOOL assessment – planned, developed, conducted, examined and reported by teachers in schools.

CENTRAL assessment – involving standards, instruments, data analyses and guidelines provided by the MES.

CENTRAL examination – fully conducted by the MES.

PSYCHOMETRIC tests – used to measure students’ innate abilities.

PHYSICAL activity assessment – used to evaluate and measure students’ performance and involvement in extra-curricular activities.

The MES has recommended that only the Sijil Pelajaran Malaysia for Form Five students be retained as a public, central examination at the upper secondary level.