Proving their mettle

Several winners with Morris (back row, second from left) and Education Ministry Co-Curricular and Arts Division assistant director Muhammad Najib Ahmad (second from right) at the medal ceremony.

MALAYSIAN students won 84 gold medals at this year’s International Competitions and Assessments for Schools (ICAS 2016).

UNSW vice-president, Campus Life and Community Engagement Neil Morris presented the winners with their medals and congratulated them on their success and achievements at the medal ceremony last Saturday.

Organised by Educational Assessment & Testing Services Sdn. Bhd. (EATS), the Malaysian representative of UNSW Global, ICAS is a world-class assessment programme by the University of New South Wales, Australia, with more than two million students participating annually across countries from India to New Zealand.

The competition assesses students in their academic skills in five subjects tested – Digital Technologies, English, Mathematics, Science and Writing.

With about 40,000 tests taken in schools across Malaysia, this year’s competition produced a triple gold medal winner – Raamamurthy Sathyanarayanan, an Upper Six student won gold medals in English, Mathematics and Science.

He has just been offered to further his education in India under a scholarship.

Four others were double gold medal winners namely Year Two pupil Khor Yan Xun in English and Mathematics; Year Six pupil Megan Yap in Digital Technologies and English; Form One student Yip Ren-Wei in English and Writing and Form Three student Timothy Chung Dachuan in Digital Technologies and Science.

“ICAS is not simply a test but a global benchmarking assessment that seeks not only to test intellectual and academic ability, but to gauge thinking skills and diagnostically analyse the students’ progress in these areas,” he said when speaking to the gold medal recipients, parents and teachers.