An Easy Problem for the Education Ministry?

The government did a good thing by abolishing examination fees for this helps poorer Malaysians who may otherwise drop out of school earlier.

I remember during my school days my family had to apply for school fees exemption and that concession helped all my four brothers stay in school for as long as they wanted.

The problem of students wanting to take extra papers can be viewed from a few angles:

It seems that getting an A is too easy nowadays and maybe the standard should be raised so that not more than 10 to 15% of students achieve this result.

If seven subjects are the requirements for any exam, the students should be asked to pay exam fees for any extra paper as resources are needed to cater for these students. Perhaps RM25 per extra subject would be a reasonable amount.

The MOE can also designate ECAs as being more valuable for scholarships than the extra papers and if we tighten standards on granting “As” it should be possible to select outstanding pupils based on 5 subjects.

We should not encourage schools to cater for exotic subjects so that some mugger can score 15As and become a celebrity but we should encourage our students to spend more time in sports and other healthy activities so that inter-racial harmony can be enhanced.

Instead of having to build extra classrooms for the extra subjects the money would be better spent on renting sports fields and other games facilities. Those who want to take subjects not taught in schools will have to take private lessons.

I was thinking….maybe our Education Minister can make his point more succinctly at a meeting of education officials and parents by displaying that infamous symbol of his?