Some who performed well in other subjects were reported to have obtained unexpectedly lower grades for the moral studies paper.

Muda vice-president Siva Prakash said that the complaint being raised with the education department involves SMK Vivekananda, a secondary school in Brickfields. Similar concerns had been raised from other parts of the country, he said.

He said the complaint is being raised by Sri Murugan Centre, a non-profit education organisation, which claims that many students are missing out on the matriculation programme because weaker-than-expected moral studies results have caused them to fall short of the current 10A requirement.

“For every student that I meet, at least one or two raise the same issue. I also have a WhatsApp group with teachers in the northern region who focus on moral studies, and they say the same thing,” he told FMT.

He said many students and parents have long felt that the subject is unusually hard to score in, especially when students who do well in other papers end up with a B in the subject or lower.

Siva, who is a former country manager for UK exam board Edexcel, said the main problem was that students and teachers were not clearly told how final grades are decided.

He said international exam systems such as IGCSE use a transparent uniform marking scheme that shows how raw marks are converted into scaled grades using published thresholds. “This allows students and educators to understand how performance translates into results across examinations,” he said.

Siva said SPM grades are based on a moderation framework where grade boundaries are adjusted according to cohort performance and paper difficulty, but are not shown transparently.

“We can continue using moderation because that is what the country has used for many years, but the transparency part is missing,” he said.

He urged the authorities to share more details such as grade thresholds, overall subject performance and how marking mechanisms are calibrated. “SPM is one of the most important national benchmarks. It must not only be fair, but must be seen to be fair,” he said.

FMT has sought comments from the education department.