KOTA KINABALU: Sabah’s Penilaian Menengah Rendah (PMR) results this year showed an improvement in its state average point (GPN) from 3.01 last year to 2.95 this year, which is accorded as the best compared to the state’s overall performance in the last five years.
Although there has been a decrease in the number of all A’s scorers, the percentage of candidates passing the minimum proficiency level (Grade A, B, C, and D), have also showed an improvement, whereby 23,622 out of the 36,990 PMR candidates in Sabah passed with a minimum grade D, an improvement of 1.82 per cent from last year’s results.There has been a drop of 0.22 per cent in the number of all A’s scorers from 922 candidates last year to 916 candidates achieving A’s in all subjects this year. Ten subjects showed an improvement in the passing rate, with Arab language recording the highest increase percentage of 16.3 per cent.
However, three subjects showed a decrease in the passing percentage, including the English language, decreasing from 68.3 per cent in last year’s results to 68.1 per cent this year.
In Sabah, the PMR 2013 result was announced at the SM Sains Sabah by the state’s Deputy Education Director, Maimunah Suhaibul.
SM Sains Lahad Datu was announced as the best school in Sabah, achieving a 100 per cent passing percentage and a school average point (GPS) of 1.11, followed by SM Sains Sabah with a GPS of 1.12, although the latter recorded the most number of candidates to score A’s in all subject, with 70 candidates.
SMK Agama Kota Kinabalu was placed third in the list, with a GPS of 1.42, followed by SM Islamiah Tawau with 1.55, SMK Agama Tun Ahmad Shah with 1.59, SMK Agama Mohd Ali Ranau with 1.79, SMK Agama Sandakan with 1.94, SM St Michael Penampang with 2.01, SMK Agama Tun Mustapha with 2.01, and SM All Saints with 2.04.
In a press conference after the announcement yesterday, Maimunah disclosed that Sabah will be the pioneering state to implement the District Transformation Programme (DTP), a programme to increase the state’s GPS by 10 per cent from the year 2013 to 2015.
She also reiterated that the Penilaian Menengah Rendah examination system will be replaced with the Penaksiran Penilaian Menengah Rendah (PPMR), where four subjects, namely, Bahasa Melayu, English, Mathematics and Science will be evaluated centrally, while other subjects such as History and Geography will be on school-based evaluation.
Meanwhile, Maimunah pointed out that despite various efforts by the state education department to improve the state’s performance in the English language subject, it remains to be the most difficult subject to improve.
“However, we will see to it that more programmes and efforts will be implemented to continue and try to improve the English language subject performance in the state,” she said.