PT3 exam abolished, says Education Minister

PUTRAJAYA: There will be no more Form Three Assessment (PT3) from this year onwards.

Education Minister Datuk Dr Radzi Jidin (pic) said the ministry would be improving school-based assessment (PBS) to determine students’ performance in their studies.

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"PT3 will be abolished from 2022," he said during a press conference Thursday (June 2).

Radzi said PBS includes classroom-based (PBD), physical, sports and co-curricular, and psychometric assessments.

PBS has been used in primary schools since 2011 and in secondary schools since 2012, he added.

PBD, he said, consists of two parts - formative and summative.

The formative section is an ongoing assessment done by teachers throughout the year to determine a student's performance early on and carry out interventions if necessary, Radzi said.

Summative assessments are done at the end of a period, he said, adding that it would be the end-of-year exams.

The questions for these summative assessments, he added, would be taken from a question bank set up by the ministry for particular subjects.

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There will be five subjects for primary school - Bahasa Malaysia, English, Mathematics, Science and History - and all subjects for secondary school will be in the question bank.

He said these summative assessments would be carried out every year and would focus just on the syllabus of that particular year.

The timing will also be flexible and the ministry will provide a time frame when the exams must be completed.

He said the ministry made the decision after receiving feedback that there were differing standards in the PT3 exams among the schools.

Radzi also said teachers would be trained to carry out PBS more effectively based on the needs of the schools and the students.

Changing the assessment timing and content allows for students who are not up to par during these assessments to receive the necessary interventions early on, he added.

The PT3 examination for Form Three students has been cancelled for the past two years as a result of the pandemic.

Talks have been rife of scrapping PT3, especially after the centralised Ujian Pencapaian Sekolah Rendah (UPSR) for Year Six students was abolished in 2021.

PT3 began in 2014 to replace PMR.

In February 2022, Radzi said no decision had been made yet about PT3 as the ministry was still studying the best approach while taking into consideration the students’ mastery level.