[UPDATED] Education Ministry abolishes PT3 exams from 2022 onwards

KUALA LUMPUR – The Education Ministry has announced that the Form 3 Assessment (PT3) examination will be abolished starting from this year. 

In a press conference today, Senior Minister Datuk Mohd Radzi Md Jidin said that school-based assessments will continue to be bolstered to ensure that parents and teachers are kept updated on students’ achievements. 

“The ministry will work on strengthening other forms of assessment.

“These checkups are not meant to be high-stake examinations as we want to build our students without pressuring them,” he said, adding that engagement sessions were held with several parent-teacher associations, school authorities and relevant stakeholders before the decision was finalised. 

Radzi noted that formative and summative assessments throughout the academic term will allow parents and teachers to more closely monitor the development of students and hold intervention sessions if the need arises. 

“Compared to PT3, which was held when students are already set to move on to the next academic stage, our new approach will allow us to immediately identify problems faced by students and how they can be guided,” he said. 

He added that the assessments will also aid students in determining their preferred stream for Form 4, as analysis of their results and discussions with teachers will reveal their strengths and weaknesses. 

Besides providing sets of assessment questions for basic subjects – Bahasa Malaysia, English, mathematics, science and history – for Year 4, 5 and 6 students, the ministry will also have a question bank covering all subjects for Form 1, 2 and 3 pupils. 

Radzi said that teachers will have access to the bank and school administrations have the freedom to set the exact assessment dates based on a time frame provided by the ministry.

He also clarified that the Specific Schools Admission Assessment is a separate procedure that will continue to be implemented and students who are interested in furthering their education at boarding schools can sit for the exam. 

In February, the ministry said that it has yet to decide on the implementation of PT3 for the 2022 session as it was still looking into the most suitable approach by considering students’ levels of mastery and indications from the ongoing 2021 school session. 

In response, certain quarters from groups representing parents and teachers advocated classroom assessments, while others pushed for centralised means of measuring students’ performance. 

The PT3 assestment was introduced in 2014 to replace the Lower Secondary Evaluation (PMR), which was implemented between 1993 and 2013. – The Vibes, June 2, 2022