The reason? The teachers have gone missing.
“I had three teachers – for Bahasa Melayu, Sejarah and Chemistry – who skipped classes,” he said. “We were left to learn all by ourselves. It has basically been self-study.”
Chan is among many SPM candidates who are pleading with the government to cancel the upcoming examination, citing the fall in teaching quality which has left them at a disadvantage.
The SPM exam has been the subject of numerous postponements because of Covid-19.
Last June, the education ministry announced that the exam for the 2020 cohort would be moved to Jan 9, but in November it was pushed back further to Feb 22 due to the rising number of Covid-19 cases.
Chan told FMT the exam was “no longer a feasible reality” and called for it to be cancelled altogether.
He said certain teachers at his school were not motivated to teach, leaving students to fend for themselves in facing one of the most important exams in their school life.
With all the time they had at home, they should have prepared well to teach but this was not the case and some had not followed the schedule students were given, he claimed.
He suggested that grades be given using teacher assessments, like in British schools after the cancellation of the General Certificate of Secondary Education. He said “mini-exams” could be used to aid this process.
Nurul Rifayah, a student in Selangor, agrees that the SPM should be scrapped. She said she too felt that some teachers had not done enough to prepare their students for the exam.
“Some teachers didn’t hold classes and some students didn’t have access to online learning,” she said. “Also, some teachers don’t know how to use things like PowerPoint, Zoom, and other online tools. So the quality of online learning hasn’t been good.”
She called the pandemic “eye-opening” and said it provided an opportune time to reform the education system to improve how students are assessed now and after the pandemic.
“We could take results from Form 1 until Form 5 and let teachers make an assessment,” she said. “They can interview the students and parents to assess soft skills as well as our academic abilities.”
Eva Ray Siew, another Ipoh-based candidate, disagrees. She said she was tired of all the uncertainty and hoped she would be able to put last year behind her after Feb 22.
“I hope they don’t cancel or postpone it again,” she said. “I just want to get it over with.
“The date has moved so many times and we’ve been put under so much stress about when we’ll actually sit for these exams. Will it be tomorrow or in a few months? This anxiety has peaked and really taken a toll on us.”
She said online learning had not been as engaging as physical classes and some teachers were unable to offer additional help outside of class time.
Therefore, she feels the exam may as well proceed given that it is less than two weeks away.
“We’re so close already. But, with all due respect, our government tends to have a lot of last minute announcements.”
CLICK HERE FOR THE LATEST DATA ON THE COVID-19 SITUATION IN MALAYSIA