System hinges heavily on teachers

THE Education Ministry will announce next year if the now centrally-administered Year Six exam, UPSR, would be replaced fully by the school-based assessments, popularly known as PBS.

A likely outcome is that UPSR will go the way of PMR (Form Three exam). We now have PT3 (Pentaksiran Tingkatan Tiga or Form 3 Assessments) which is a combination of PBS and exam papers that will be set and graded according to marking schemes predetermined by the ministry.

These papers are marked and graded by the same school teachers. The final results would be announced by the ministry after some “coordination and standardisation” works have been performed.

While PBS is promoted as the panacea for our overly exam-focused school system, some aspects of it continue to be the source of concern, apprehension, anxiety and uncertainty among students, parents, teachers and other stakeholders.

A commonly heard “complaint” is that assessments would vary from teacher to teacher, class to class and from school to school. Many of the school assessments deal with subjective answers and reports. Teachers have to exhibit strict objectivity and fair play in their markings.

Though the ministry has assured time and again that its coordinating officers are on the ground to ensure there is “standardisation” through all levels, the task is mammoth.

It is made more difficult given the short time span between final submission of students’ works and the announcement of results. Given the sheer magnitude of supervision and checking required to ensure fair play, how do you eliminate human biases and prejudices?

Students and parents are hesitant to complain or bring this up but isn’t it odd that sometimes all in one class get a good grade/band for a certain subject while in another, not a single student gets the good grade/band?

Assessments can be very subjective and a lot depends on the teacher. The worst that can happen would be if a teacher decides not to “like” a particular class.

Then it’s just a blanket low grade/band for all in the class. This can be disappointing and demotivating when students are not acknowledged based on their actual performance.

Parents are also asking if an “A” for English given by a school in a rural setting would be the same as the “A” awarded by a school in urban Damansara Utama, for example.

Also, there could be differences in terms of complexity between projects carried out in an urban setting and those done in a rural setting. Would teachers be biased in favouring complexity of projects rather than merely seeking out the necessary “research” and “report” ingredients involved? If teachers are careless, students from a rural setting could be unduly penalised.

After a few years, some less-than-responsible teachers have become “smart” in the marking and scoring of PBS.

They seem to be simply giving good marks to good students and average and median grades to all the rest, sometimes without really going through the answer scripts or the reports submitted. This is making a mockery of the whole assessment system!

The plus side of PBS is the assessment done on other aspects of a child’s development.

This includes his participation and achievements in sport and co-curricular activities where the measurements are more objective. Nevertheless, teachers in charge have to be diligent in entering all relevant data and perform all the necessary calculations accordingly.

Then there are the assessments of a student’s psychometrics. Though these measurements can be both objective and subjective, the outputs are more personal and not subject to competition, as in the case of cognitive and academic measurements. So, usually there are no “objections” here.

The students and their parents should be thankful if teachers conduct the tests professionally and reveal to them their strengths and weaknesses in their personality traits and characteristics.

In conclusion, teachers play a vital role in ensuring the success of every aspect of PBS.

Taken seriously and with selfless commitment from teachers, PBS is the way forward especially at the primary and lower secondary levels when students are in their prime developmental stages of their education.

LIONG KAM CHONG

Seremban