PETALING JAYA: A petition to postpone or even cancel the 2020 Sijil Pelajaran Malaysia (SPM) examinations has garnered wide support from students and parents.
On the other side are stakeholders who believe that there are no excuses left to not proceed with the exams as planned.
The petition on change.org calling for a postponement or cancellation of the examinations, scheduled for Feb 22, has garnered more than 42,000 signatures as of the middle of this week.
On the Twitter hashtag #SuaraPelajar, students have highlighted the frequent cancellation of classes and the problems they face in preparing for the examinations as reasons for a postponement or cancellation.
The change.org petition, initiated by a group of SPM candidates, outlines the “enormous pressure” to cope with the syllabus while they work on rebuilding their confidence and passion for their studies.
Calling themselves SPM Candidates 2020, they complain that learning has been “drastically impacted” by the irregular school days.
“It is a vicious cycle, students are not going to school, losing their passion to study, going back to school, coping (with) their syllabus and rebuilding their confidence with a new examination date then being ‘knocked down’ again with the uncertain exam dates,” they said in their petition.
However, the National Parent-Teacher Associations Consultative Council is adamant that the SPM exams should not be delayed further.
Its president, Assoc Prof Datuk Dr Mohamad Ali Hasan, said students must learn to “sacrifice for the sake of their own future”.
“Let us get it over and done with. If they have to do intensive study, day and night, by all means do it, with the help of their teachers,” he told theSun.
“There is no point in postponing the exams any longer. The only certainty about the Covid-19 pandemic is its uncertainty,” he said.
“What difference does it make by postponing it to next month? We do not know if the pandemic will end by then. They (the students) will just have to gear up and do the necessary,” he added.
Mohamad Ali said the Education Ministry should look into revamping the education system to assess the performance of students based on more than just one examination. “How well they do in the SPM should not determine the rest of their lives,” he said.
“A better system is to base 50% of the performance on a continuous assessment. Marks are given not just for IQ (intelligence quotient) but also for other factors such as EQ (emotional quotient),” he said.
Meanwhile, the Parent Action Group for Education (PAGE) has urged the government to allow SPM students to continue to skip classes until it is time to sit for the exams.
“As parents, we are also concerned about our children’s safety,” it chairman Datin Noor Azimah Abdul Rahim told theSun.
“Reports that teachers were not closely observing the SOP (standard operating procedures) when school reopened for a short spell last year is very discomforting,” she said.
It was reported on Tuesday that a group of SPM candidates in Lipis, Pahang, had to be put under quarantine after testing positive for Covid-19
All 144 of them have reportedly been placed at quarantine centres in Bukit Tinggi.
In another case, 36 students in Sabah also tested positive for Covid-19 upon their return to their school hostels for the new semester.
According to the Education Ministry, about 500,000 students will sit for the various public examinations this year.
