Amin: Slight dip in HOTS results

PUTRAJAYA: The Sijil Pelajaran Malaysia (SPM) 2018 saw a drop in candidates’ grasp of Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) questions from the previous year.Education director-general Datuk Dr Amin Senin said 61.1% of the SPM 2018 candidates answered HOTS questions well.

Based on records, this is a drop from SPM 2017, which stood at 66%.

But Dr Amin said students did better in the assessment and creation category compared to analysis and application.

“This is a good sign. Candidates who have a good grasp of HOTS provided medium- and high-quality answers,” he said in a press conference when announcing the SPM 2018 results analysis yesterday.

Since 2014, HOTS questions have found their way into national level examinations and will gradually be increased until 2020.The questions are divided into four skill categories – application, analysis, assessing and creation.Of the four skills, Dr Amin said the highest percentage of candidates possessed skills for assessment-type questions at 70.1%.

“Candidates were able to assess based on the information provided to solve problems, evaluate information and make good conclusions,” he added.

He urged teachers to emphasise HOTS as a whole and not merely teach students how to answer them.

On the language subjects, he said these had seen a slight drop from the previous year.

Encouraging statistics: Dr Amin said SPM 2018 candidates did better overall compared with 2017, even though fewer of them scored straight As.

Bahasa Malaysia dropped from 4.19 points to 4.11, English from 5.98 points to 5.84, English Literature from 3.37 points to 3.05 and Malay Literature from 5.28 points to 5.06.

Dr Amin said the ministry was studying the reason behind the dip, adding: “It could be due to students’ lack of critical thinking and ‘critical reading’.

“We have rebranded the Education Min­istry’s Nilam (Nadi Ilmu Amalan Membaca) programme to include more critical thinking and critical reading, where students can contextualise and analyse the four Ws and one H (who, what, why, where and how), which is lacking among them,” he said.

The index used to show the performance of subjects is the Average Subject Grade.

Examinations Syndicate director of examinations Adzman Talib said HOTS questions might have played a role in the dip.

The SPM 2018 also saw a shrinking performance gap between rural and urban candidates, which Dr Amin said was due to the increase in rural candidates’ achievements.

A total of 58.9% or 230,465 candidates, passed all subjects, with 24 of the 63 subjects recording an improvement in performance.

“There are 1.12% of candidates who failed all subjects. These are not necessarily only school candidates, they could be private candidates as well,” Dr Amin explained.

Candidates last year did better overall compared with 2017, even when fewer of them scored straight As, he added.

He said 8,436 or 2.2% of the candidates obtained A+, A or A- in all of their subjects.

“Overall, students did better when viewed using the National Grade Average (GPN).

“The latest GPN is 4.89, which is better than 2017’s GPN of 4.9. A smaller GPN means that candidates performed better in the examinations,” Dr Amin said.

GPN scores range from 0 to 9.