Centralized Trial Exams...UPSR, PMR, SPM, STPM

Today the SPM Trial Exam for Kedah will start. It's a centralized exam... meaning all the students in the state sit for the same papers.

That's the practice for quite some time now... each state will have its own trial exams for all the major public exams... UPSR, PMR, SPM and STPM. The setup of the state trial exams mimic that of the public exams. Teachers are called up from various schools from various districts. They meet and discuss the questions to be set... very often some of those who sit in the panel might be those involved in the national setup for the public exams. So, it is always prudent to pay attention to the questions. And students go into a frenzy to collect the questions from all the states and also the residential schools, weeks prior to the actual exams.

But one of the issues which seem to plague the trial exam questions is the way that they seem to find their way to the students' hands before the exam even begins. There have been years when copies were available even before the exam started. And I suspect too that there are also leakages from those involved in setting the questions right down to the printers, teachers and administrators. The security for it is loose cos there are schools where the heads don't bother about it.

Questions leak also because teachers who give tuitions 'leak' the questions because they want their fame to spread.... that their students do well. Results for trial exams can be seen and felt quite fast... so good words are passed around even before the school closes for the year. By the end of the year, when tuition classes open for registration, many of the seniors' words would still ring fresh in their juniors.

So this trial exam thing feels like a farce now. There are schools here who conduct their own internal trial exams after the compulsory trial exams... because the teachers don't trust the results of the latter. I think it's justifiable. The state trial exams can actually be a good thing... but like everything else, when integrity is compromised...... well, we all know what can happen.

So, sometimes I wonder why do it, when the system reeks with leakages everywhere. Cos one of the things it's capable of doing is to lull those students who have actually done the questions prior to the exam into a false sense of everything-is-okay with them. And we also seem to be condoning this acts of cheating. Our kids grow up used to having such kind of questionable practices...