FEB 25 — The Ministry of Education’s decision to put the school-based assessment (PBS) on hold is indeed welcoming. Perhaps the Ministry understands now that they need to engage the important stakeholders especially parents and educators before implementing any policy change. With this in place, only then can Malaysia provide the best education system with the cooperation of all.

The objective of PBS is good because it intends to do away with rote learning as well as an exam centric system. Students gain marks from other ways like project work, assignments, volunteering activities and so on. The good thing is that assessments are not solely dependent on 100 per cent final exams, hence there is less stress for the students at year end.

PBS can still operate at school level. But, it needs to do away with the copious paper work reporting that serves no benefit to the teachers or students.  Students should do some kind of assignments and homework as they usually do, but these assignments shouldn’t be counted as part of PBS grading system. The poor teachers cannot be expected to tabulate these assignments on a daily basis. This is just not practical.

PBS should therefore focus on grading based on different percentages, for example, 5 per cent attendance, 5 per cent conduct, 20 per cent co-curriculum, 20 per cent projects, 20 per cent monthly examinations, 30 per cent final exams. They should also do away with grading by bands, and should retain the usual grading of ABCD & F.

A major concern of parents regarding PBS is that it may have a certain degree of biasness due to different ways of marking or even favouritism. Therefore teachers and school leaders must be monitored by an organisation or superintendents that do school visits instead of schools reporting to them remotely.

The Trust schools for example are overseen by an education service provider, LeapEd Services. They work closely with the schools to monitor their progress. Perhaps an education service provider or a group of superintendents could be placed at various district and state education departments to monitor the progress of PBS in schools.

Right now, the current Form 3 especially is adversely affected by the PBS policy uncertainty.

We have to accept the fact that examinations are inevitable. They serve as the most accurate comparison across the board.  Teachers and schools are responsible for teaching students what they are required to know. Malaysian students are accustomed to examinations, and many are motivated by them.

Perhaps the Form 3 students should take limited PMR (Lower Secondary Assessment) exams with the core subjects, just like the UPSR (Primary School Assessment). The PMR requirements should be Bahasa Malaysia, English, Science and Mathematics. The Form 3 cohorts should also be running the school based assessment concurrently throughout the year, and end their year with this limited PMR exam.

Bring back the UPSR and PMR and run the PBS concurrently with these standardised tests. Parents do not wish to be obsessed with examinations, but we want assurance that the teachers and the schools will teach responsibly and the students are able to learn effectively whilst being properly assessed. Until such time that there is some kind of standardisation across the board in terms of marking schemes and methods of evaluation, as well as school autonomy on their performance, we will not be able to accept anything else but standardised testing or in other words, exams.

* Parent Action Group for Education (PAGE) is a pro-English language educational lobbyist. For further information on PAGE, go here.

** This is the personal opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of The Malay Mail Online.