KOTA KINABALU: The students in rural schools in Sabah created history when they outperformed their peers in urban schools with their SPM 2018 results.
Sabah Education director Mistirine Radin said the rural schools recorded 88.18% of candidates passed all subjects, while their urban peers at 87.19%, indicating the quality of education in rural schools in the state has been improving every year.
She said the placement of interim teachers in rural schools, beginning early last year was one of the main factors contributing to the improvement of rural schools’ achievement.
“This is because all this while, the main problem faced by the Sabah education sector was the lack of teachers in rural areas, however, with the appointment of interim teachers based on option and locality, the move has helped the districts which are in critical need of teachers,” she told reporters after announcing SPM 2018 results for Sabah here, today.
She said the commitment and skills in teaching and learning process displayed by the interim teachers, comprising Sabah-born educators, also impacted the achievement of rural school students.
That apart, performance dialogues focussing on certain issues, that involved collaboration between the academic management, schools and teachers also contributed to the good result, she said.
Earlier, Mistirine said the National Average Grade (GPN) achievement for Sabah showed 0.07 point increase at 5.44 compared to 5.51 in 2017, while the percentage of students who passed all subjects has also recorded an increase of 2.33% to 88.53% compared with 86.20% in 2017.
“A total of 17,420 SPM 2018 candidates passed all subjects including Grade E compared to 17,217 in 2017, while 152 top scorers obtained Grade A (A+, A, and A-) in 2018,” she said.
A total of 22 of the 53 subjects taken by candidates in Sabah achieved 100% pass rate, she said. — Bernama
