Every year when JPA announced its scholarships to those who obtained excellent results in SPM, we will normally see a number of high achievers appear in papers together with their parents and complaint about not getting JPA scholarships despite getting results with flying colors.
Most of these high achievers have more than 10As, and each time, MCA Youth will come out to champion for these students, then both opposition and BN will have a round of hoo-ha in the media.
I am quite surprised to see that Muhyiddin resolve the problem by restricting the exam papers that can be taken by students in SPM. Well, will this measure help to resolve the problem?
What if next year, we have thousands of students who obtain 10 A1 which is more than the number of scholarships that can be awarded by the education ministry? Then the scenario might be some of these high achievers get scholarships and some do not get at all. Then there might be another round of hoo-ha in the media again.
Well, this is not impossible. I find students nowadays are much smarter compare to my time. To get 10 As is something very easy and simple for this young generation. Look, these students can get more than 10 As despite taking more than 10 papers in the SPM exam. However, they are still being denied of JPA scholarships despite being smart in their studies.
The crux of the problem is the selection process of JPA scholarship is unjust and unfair. To restrict the number of papers is a suppression of their rights to knowledge and suppression to their talents. The real problems lie in the hands of education ministry officers who are involved in the selection process. We should not blame the students for taking too many papers, but we should blame this bunch of unfair and unjust officers who have created the mess year after year.
To restrict Form 5 students to take 10 papers only show that the education minister failed to arrest the root of the problem, instead he has created another mess by coming up with such policy.
If students nowadays are studious and willing to learn more, let them be la, why restrict them to study more and take more papers?
This new policy is ridiculous. It is against human rights. I hope Muhyiddin can rectify it.
士布爹区国会议员兼行动党全国组织秘书郭素沁于2009年5月29日（星期五）在莎亚南发表的文告
限SPM考生只考10科是剥夺他们学习的权力和治标不治本的做法
我对于教育部限制中五考生只能在SPM里报考10科的政策感到惊讶。这政策不单只解决不了公共服务局奖学金分配不公平的问题，它也更剥夺考生求学和求知的权力。
多年来，公共服务局奖学金分配不公平的问题一再发生，这问题的发生不在于学生报考的科目太多，而在于负责遴选奖学金得主的公务员不公正，因此，政府应该对付负责遴选奖学金的公务员，而不是限制中五考生报考的科目。
试想，在限制报考科目的新政策推行后，明年如果成千上万的考生考获10A1，而导致奖学金不够分配的话，那么政府是否又要改变政策呢？
教育部这种限制考生报考科目的做法根本就治标不治本。我呼吁新上任的教育部长慕希丁能纠正这偏差的做法。
郭素沁
when every year, we see top scorers complain and appeal (and frequently we see negligent doctors maiming and killing, preventable collapse of buildings etc) one wonders how we identify, retain, reward and develop human capital.
it makes sickening reading whenever the MSM reports on knowledge economy, the government is fair to all races, blah blah blah. mind you, I puke reading MSM while a couple cans and beer mixed with 2 glass of red wine only got me slightly p*ssed.
now our DPM with international trade experience has try to solve this JPA issue by limiting the capability of our younger generation. I thought as leaders, one of their role is to create an environment where their sub-ordinates or in this case, tax payers who pay them almighty fat perks, to flourish and excel.
we must differentiate scholarship and study aid
(a) For social restructuring (bluntly put, less bright students that qualifies due to racial reasons) can have access to loans and aids. this is meant for social re-engineering. period.
(b) then allocate scholarships for the best and brightest, base on meritocracy where race or family income level is not a criteria. these scholarship holders can then be identified to serve a bond after graduation to ensure tax payers’ money can have its return in place.
we surely have more than enough funds for this. if we can afford to burn our money like in PKFTZ almightiest scandal, then surely we can buy 1 submarine less also to finance the deserving Malaysians and lessen the burden.
by the way, drop the SPM level, lift it up to STPM/pre-U level because it has been proven that SPM high achievers may falter in the next level
(1) no denial that students of this generation are smarter than their predecessors, but have we also asked why there are so many A scorers? Is that the standard of SPM going downhill? or is that marking scheme getting looser? or is that a policy issue that the ministry want to artificially raise the standard of the education so that to look good on their face (or their race’s face)? just compared our SPM/STPM with O’level and A’level. I may be speculating, but if we put out students to these Cambridge exams, what will they get? This may be an issue of talented students unrewarded or it may be an issue of superficial performance with low standard. Both are not desired.
(2) If the 10 subject limit is in place, (just step into the shoes of the students and their parent) we could easily anticipate some educational decisions from them:
(a) the students will take all 10 max, then spend just enough time to score A’s (coz it is simply too simple?!); while on the other hand, spend the rest of their time doing extracurricular activities (which are seen to be more ‘valuable’)—what will happen? studying formal knowledge will become mechanical, no appetite to acquire more knowledge or new knowledge. I guess this is not healthy, we would never be able to produce world class academicians. This in turn will be reflected in our university ranking amongst the world’s best.
(b) the more reactive parents will think why are they sending their potential talented children (yes, in the eyes of parents, all of their children are talented!)to these ‘average’ national schools. They would resort to send their children to the higher standard chinese independent school or (if affordable) send their children to overseas to complete high school education. These has 2 implications: the former will see their children struggle harder to perform after graduation as the uniform tests are not recognized. the latter will see brain drain, easily.
Awarding scholarships should fairly and justly be based on merit, both academic results and excellence performances in co-curricular activities. The racial quota distributions should be totally done away with.
The selection of sportsmen and sportwomen for centralised training is always drawn from among those performed exceptionally well in national sports meet and those having huge potentials for success in the various sports, as they stand a better chance of winning honours for the country. In the same vain, the selection of JPA scholarhip recipients should also be based on the criteria of the best and the brightest, as they have better learning capacity thus ensuring the country ecure a big pool of talented people for national advancement.
The learning capacity of students varies. Limiting the number of SPM subjects for each student to sit for is simply stifling their talents and intellect growth.
Most of the time, one finds the government not exercising rationality in decisions making, like in the award of JPA scholarship recipients and limiting the number of SPM subjects for each student
Dear YB and my fellow M’sian Lee Wee Tak
I totally agree with your comment stated above.
Having said that, it is so… so…. unfortunate that we hv a bunch of MPs including number one and number two leader who are not applying any common sense in their actions in planning and decision making to lead the nation to another level. Instead of upgrading the nation,
M’sia is downgrading!..
How are we going to stay ahead for change! my answer is FELLOW M’SIANs PLS PLS PLS…… FOR GOD’S SAKE VOTE FOR PAKATAN RAKYAT COALITION!….. BN MUST TUMBLE! DOWN TO THE GROUND !……..LOOK AT THE PORT KLANG SCANDAL CAUSED us billions….. who benefited fm this? the rakyat?
That’s why I said before we need more MPs who hv more common sense. Mr. Robert Kuok the richest man in Malaysia said once in an interview that nowadays common sense is not common any more!.. I really admire his wisdom!
GOD BLESS M’SIA
My neighbour’s daughter, Geeta, with 10As in SPM and 4As in STP was yesterday rejected by UM, UKM and USM for medicine. Then they blame the Indians. What else must she do?
My daughter, same school mate with Geeta, with quite similar results was rejected by NUS and Nanyang but she got U Hong Kong and U Science & Technology HK, both are top no. 1 and no. 3 universities in asia. Needless to say, she was rejected by USM too!!
I forgot to add:
Can you take a delegation of parliamentarians to Singapore and request the govt there to open one whole university for Malaysians? Without Singapore and HK opening their gates to Malaysians, the chinese and indians here are academically trapped! Even the malays need this opening as many are fed up with the standards and culture here in the universities.