Marcus Hugo Lejau
MIRI (Nov 2): A former educationist has cautioned that students and teachers in Sarawak risk being overburdened if the state decides to proceed with its own centralised assessment examination for Year 6 pupils.
Former school principal Marcus Hugo Lejau said it would be redundant to have another assessment exam as what is needed is to improve on the implementation of the current classroom-based assessment (PBD).
He said it would be stressful for both teachers and pupils to cope with the pressure of having both assessment systems in Sarawak schools.
“It will be an added burden for teachers to mark the papers and other paperwork that comes with it, with an added group needed to prepare the centralised question papers that are of quality and reliability.
“The pupils meanwhile have to prepare for another assessment examination besides what is carried out in the school,” he told The Borneo Post.
Yesterday, Education, Innovation and Talent Development Minister Dato Sri Roland Sagah Wee Inn announced that Sarawak aims to develop its own assessment examination for Year 6 pupils in all government schools.
He said the assessment would resemble the Ujian Pencapaian Sekolah Rendah (UPSR) which was abolished by the Education Ministry in 2021, adding that the state ministry believed this would be the only way to determine the pupils’ true performance.
In disagreeing with having a new assessment examination so soon after PBD was introduced, Marcus pointed out that no proper studies were conducted to identify PBD’s weaknesses, and that a new examination would only be necessary if it served a different purpose than the PBD.
Since the abolishment of UPSR in 2021, the Ministry of Education introduced the PBD, which is conducted by the respective subject teachers in the classroom, with the results keyed in into a centralised system prepared by the ministry.
Marcus said the issue that needs to be addressed is implementation, as reliability and integrity of assessment by teachers are key for their reports to be reliable.
“If the plan for having another assessment examination is just to determine the streaming of going to Science or Art stream, it may be limiting.
“In fact, if PBD is done effectively and the data is processed accordingly, the streaming can be determined,” he said.