SPM students not ready for exams: academicians

KUALA LUMPUR – An associate professor at a local university said SPM students are not prepared to sit for this year’s examinations.

Universiti Selangor (Unisel) Centre for Graduate Studies deputy dean Associate Prof  Dr Gunasegaran Karuppannan said, among the reasons for the lack of preparedness is the fact that SPM students have not sat for any trial exams thus far.

“If people are of the opinion that SPM students are ready to face their exams, I disagree. 

“How is that possible when there are no trial exams thus far? They will only sit for trial exams when they enter school on January 20,” he said, adding that not many SPM assessment examinations have been carried out online either, even though the real thing starts on February 22.

He added that SPM students are not able to benchmark themselves against each other due to the absence of trial exams and regular assessments, as is usually the case for national exams.

Trial exams give students the avenue to compare each other’s results and offer them a sense of where they stand against each other. 

“Currently, since everything is online, there is a feeling of alienation as students do not interact and there have been no trial exams,” he said.

Students will only have the opportunity to sit for trial exams upon re-entering school on January 20, which does not give them much time to prepare before the actual exams.

Another aspect that could have been overlooked, according to Gunasegaran, is the plight of weaker students who have been sidelined due to the nature of online classes.

“Of course, one cannot discount the extra attention paid to weaker students by the teachers when classes are face to face, but this time around, weaker students have been left to their own devices and many are too shy to speak up during online classes,” he said.

In-person SPM classes only ran for two months last year before the MCO set in and online learning kicked off.

This left students scrambling to purchase laptops and handphones, whilst many of the poorer students in rural areas had to wait for their parents to come home before they can access the devices belonging to their parents. 

Many have had to buy prepaid cards for the constant use of online classes, a cost too high to bear for many.

Another issue was the inability of science students to access laboratories to prepare them for their Biology, Physics and Chemistry Paper 3.

“How is it possible for them to sit for the Paper 3 for all these subjects when there was no laboratory access?” said Gunasegaran.

Meanwhile, an English secondary school teacher in Petaling Jaya, who taught SPM students via online classes, echoed the sentiment that SPM students are not ready to face their exams.

“SPM students will enter school on January 20, sit for their trial exams, which runs for 11 days, and then, there is the Chinese New Year break in February, which leaves them very little time to prepare and sit for their finals on February 22,” she said. – The Vibes, January 19, 2021