Getting 18A’s for SPM is easy!

It’s been more than a week since the Malaysia Higher School Certificate (SPM) results were released by the education ministry. Even though it’s been 13 years since I sat for the exam, this topic never fails to intrigue me.

Recently, too many students have been getting A’s for SPM. It’s ridiculous. Ever since Nur Amalina Che Bakri broke the record for receiving 17A1’s, everyone seems to be getting 18A’s, 16A’s, 12A’s and 10A’s these days. It’s no longer an honor to be an honors student.

As far as I remember, during my SPM days, to obtain lots of A’s is not impossible. Super brilliant, demi-god students known as “geeks” existed. They would spend hours studying, revising their SPM subjects.

Why are students doing better these days? This is my theory: The government has lowered the SPM standards. You’ll get an “A” if you score a minimum of 70 percent. When I sat for the exam in 1994, to receive an A1, you had to get a minimum of 92 percent, A2; 86 percent, C3; 75 percent, C4; 70 percent, C5; 64 percent, C6; 60 percent, P7; 54 percent, P8; 46 percent, F9 (fail) below 45 percent.

If my theory is true, you’d only have to score a lame 70 percent to get an A1. Hmmm… no wonder so many students are getting 10 to 20A’s in their SPM! Let’s see whether these high scorers still soar with “flying colours” when in college.

The low SPM standards has made our education system worthless. I bet you lah, ask a Chinese student who scored A1 in Bahasa Melayu to speak in Malay, and he or she will find great difficulty doing so. Ask a Malay student from the kampung, village, who scored A1 in Bahasa Inggeris, to converse in English, and he or she will stutter!

These secondary school students may be getting lots of A’s, but these A’s are worthless!