Being a KSSM lab rat

Through ups and downs: Zahra hopes to see the fruits of her KSSM journey when she receives her SPM results next year.

“YOU are a special batch” is what we – Standard-Based Curriculum for Secondary Schools (KSSM) lab rats – often hear. The KSSM is a new curriculum that was first implemented in the year 2017, replacing the Integrated Secondary School Curriculum (KBSM) that officially met its end early this year when the Sijil Pelajaran Malaysia (SPM) 2020 candidates sat for their examinations.

Inevitably, this curriculum replacement called for a lot of changes. For instance, Mathematics and Science – which were previously taught in English – have been reintroduced in Bahasa Malaysia.

There is also the introduction of higher-order thinking skills (HOTS) questions that have increased the level of difficulty in examinations.

The new syllabus has been upgraded to include the basics of more advanced topics that our predecessors only learned a little further in their school years. The KSSM also focuses on group projects and classroom-based assessment.

There is no denying that there are a lot of plus points that come with this new curriculum.

As the first batch of KSSM lab rats, my friends and I received freshly printed textbooks every year.

Learning the fundamentals of topics early on helped us in setting a solid foundation before diving into the fine details of the lessons later in our school years.

Introducing HOTS questions has also levelled up our problem-solving skills. These questions require more than just normal textbook answers and we are compelled to think more critically.

Answer schemes are also more subjective and less rigid and many of us are able to give answers based on our opinions.

Some questions give us situations which require us to innovate contraptions that act as solutions.

While it does make examinations harder to score, it certainly is an interesting approach to raising our intelligence quotients. Of course, being a KSSM lab rat also presents a set of challenges.

New syllabuses mean new examination formats and these always remained a mystery until later in the year.

Our teachers, who did not have any concrete guidelines to carry out their lessons, taught us in the same way they always had with our seniors only to be baffled by a sudden change of formats in the middle of the year.

It’s not uncommon to see teachers going through the new answer schemes with their students in a rush before the start of the final examinations.

We also lost the advantage of predicting questions based on past-year examination papers.

Usually, teachers could easily go through the previous papers and cross out certain topics from our “Need to Study” list to make more efficient revision plans.

But being the first takers under the new format, the list of topics possibly being tested is much longer, making our study load much heavier.

To sum up, I certainly see the benefits that the KSSM has given us so far. However, just like any newly-formed plan, it can do with some improvements.

I wish that formats and examination schemes had already been pre-planned before the entire curriculum was implemented in the first place.

As a KSSM student for almost five years, I hope to see the fruits of my journey when I receive my SPM results next year.

Zahra, 17, is a participant of the BRATs Young Journalist Programme run by The Star’s Newspaper-in-Education (Star-NiE) team. Throughout the year-long programme, participants aged between 14 and 22 from all across the country experience life as journalists, contributing ideas, conducting interviews, and completing writing assignments. They get to earn bylines, attend workshops, and extend their social networks. To join Star-NiE’s online youth community, go to facebook.com/niebrats.