He said many parents are now lamenting about their children’s lack of motivation to study.
“I’m of the view that the UPSR is a yardstick to gauge students’ preparedness to enter the next phase of their education, that is, secondary school,” he said while debating the budget in Dewan Rakyat.
He said he understood the education ministry and parents’ concerns about the education system being too exam-oriented.
“Nonetheless, I think we can find a better approach for UPSR and such,” he said.
In April 2021, the education ministry announced the abolition of the UPSR and the cancellation of the PT3 exam (Form Three) for the year. Then education minister Radzi Jidin said the ministry would introduce an alternative method to evaluate students who were supposed to sit for the two major examinations.
Sim also proposed for the government to prepare a roadmap to produce one million graduates in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) within the next five years.
He suggested for the higher education ministry to provide free studies for all students pursuing STEM courses in universities as well as for those undergoing technical and vocational education training (TVET) programmes.
He added that the higher education ministry should provide an “express lane” for Form 5 students in the science stream to pursue STEM courses in universities.
“Those who perform well (in SPM) could get offers from universities. Those who do not perform so well may enter TVET (programmes),” he said, adding that Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM) had a similar model that the ministry could emulate.
He added that the human resources ministry should set a minimum starting salary for STEM graduates, proposing at least RM4,000 for university graduates and RM2,500 from TVET programmes.
Separately, Sim called for a technical audit on vendors that provide online database systems to the schooling system.
He said the IT systems provided often suffer technical disruptions, citing the most recent incident where the registration for pupils for the academic session of 2024 to 2025 needed to be postponed.
“I want to know how much has been allocated to develop these IT systems, which companies are involved and what are the actions to be taken against them,” he said.
“Is the ministry ready to refer the matter to the audit department and the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) to investigate whether the system has failed to function according to tender and set specifications?”
Last month, education minister Fadhlina Sidek suspended the implementation of an identity management system used by teachers for filling in test scores.
The suspension came after the National Union of the Teaching Profession (NUTP) had called for the implementation of the system to be postponed as it was not stable and was not viable yet for teachers to fill in the scores of the final academic session. The identity system, developed by the ministry, is accessed by a single login through its website.