PETALING JAYA: An NGO has urged the education ministry to provide more information on the 70,455 Sijil Pelajaran Malaysia (SPM) 2021 candidates who did not get their certificates.
“We need to know the demographics, social and economic backgrounds (B40 groups, poor or rural) of these 70,455 candidates,” Untuk Malaysia, an NGO founded by former education minister Maszlee Malik, said in a statement.
It added that these candidates had faced a challenging year due to the Covid-19 pandemic and multiple movement control orders (MCOs), forcing them to follow lessons online.
“Does this downward trend indicate a failure of online learning for students from the B40 group, in rural areas, and those from poor families?”
Yesterday, education director-general Nor Zamani Abdol Hamid said that 24,941 (6.2%) SPM candidates had registered but did not sit for the examination while 45,514 (11.91%) of the candidates were not eligible for a certificate because they had failed either the Bahasa Melayu or History paper.
The NGO also asked what measures the education ministry had taken to address the large number of candidates who did not sit for the examination and the fate of those not eligible for the SPM certificate.
“The education ministry must provide a more detailed explanation in order to better understand the reasons for this high dropout rate.”
Nor Zamani also said 9,696 of the 407,097 registered candidates scored excellent results (A+, A and A-) in all subjects in the SPM 2021 examination, which was held earlier this year.
She added that the examination board would conduct a detailed study on the SPM 2021 results as this was the first time it had implemented a new format.