Nearly half a million taking newly-introduced PT3

KUALA LUMPUR: More than 450,000 candidates are sitting for the Form Three Assessment (Pentaksiran Tingkatan 3 or PT3), which ends on Thursday. It began yesterday.

This is the first time that the PT3 is being held as until last year, Form Three students sat for the Penilaian Menengah Rendah (PMR) — which was abolished at the end of last year.

Education director-general Datuk Dr Khair Mohamad Yusof said under the PT3 assessment system, school principals would be responsible for the management and marking of the answer scripts.

“However, the Examinations Syn-dicate and state education department will also act as moderators to ensure the validity and reliability of the scores of candidates,” said Dr Khair.

He said although the students would be sitting for the exams during the same time frame, the questions are likely to differ between schools.

“We provide several sets of questions and the schools would decide which set they wished to download,” said Dr Khair.

Students are sitting for Bahasa Melayu, English, Mathematics, Science, Islamic Education, Living Skills, Arabic, Chinese, Tamil, Iban, Punjabi and Kadazandusun this week.

In June this year, Deputy Prime Minister and Education Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin announced that the case study instrument assessment for history and geography would be held in July while the oral test (listening and speech) for English and Bahasa Melayu would take place in August with the written tests in October.

SMK Sentul Utama senior assistant (administration and co-curriculum) Zainon Harun said her school would follow the standard operating procedure that had been provided.

Zainon, who is in charge of administering the PT3 in her school, said her role was to ensure that the whole process was conducted according to instruction.

“We have to make sure that we follow the rules and procedures,” she said, adding that these covered the entire process — from downloading the questions to storage in the school’s safe/vault.