By Chong Lip Teck, Sin Chew Daily

A primary school student's parent posted on Facebook, asking whether UPSR exam will still be on. Many parents with children in Year 6, including me, will ask the same question.

The post has invited countless of comments from parents. Unexpectedly, most parents feel that whether UPSR is on or not is not the biggest problem. More importantly the students must learn seriously and adequately equip themselves and lay a strong foundation during their final year in primary school.

What they are trying to say is that UPSR is only a process in the primary school Year 6 education, and that it can be substituted with any other alternative to achieve the same purpose.

Most importantly, education is not all about scoring good grades in examinations but to learn the fundamental knowledge. There are many other ways to evaluate a student's performance.

We can deduce from the many comments of these parents as there are more ways than conducting a standard examination to gauge a student's academic performance. Moreover, the education ministry expanded the scope of Year 6 student assessment to include not just UPSR exam, but also classroom assessment; physical, sports and extracurricular activities assessment; and psychometric assessment, collectively called the Primary School Assessment Report (PPSR).

Written exam is still the principal evaluation method for schools, and because of that UPSR is not absolutely essential in evaluating a student's achievement, as tests at the end of each term should be good enough to gauge the student's ability.

Although these views are only from this particular group of parents, I believe there are many other parents who will share the same views.

While such an opinion may be endorsed by many, not everyone will agree to it. Moreover, we also need to take into acount the overall environment.

There have been debates on whether UPSR should be retained or abolished against the backdrop of increasingly diverse ways of student assessment in reversing the prevailing exam-oriented educational trend. Every now and then the education ministry has released signals it is exploring the possibility of abolishing UPSR.

Sure enough the authorities are aware that it is a global trend now to abolish the examination, but apparently many parents, educators and even public consensus may beg to differ. Moreover, there must be follow-up actions after abolishing UPSR. Which is an ideal alternative to UPSR that is better suited to the country's education reality? This matter needs to be explored further as it involves a lot of aspects.

Deliberations on this matter over the years have been largely inconclusive. Fortunately, the education ministry has taken gradual steps to improve on the existing curriculum and assessment methodologies with reduced weightage on written examinations. Education is no more geared towards examinations alone and has indeed become more diverse and fun.

That said, the exam culture which has been deeply rooted in our society is not something we can change overnight, and even many educators have been unable to attune themselves to the new model. Many teachers continue to carry out their teaching duties based on the old model while some of the more kiasu parents are concerned that the learning capacity of their children will be compromised in the absence of exam pressure.

Many education bureaucrats fail to see the big picture and the authorities are still using exam results as the main yardstick to gauge a student's ability as well as the school's performance and quality. The authorities have demanded schools to submit regular reports on their students' progress and this has substantially increased the administrative workload of teachers, as they busy themselves with paperwork which is actually not part of the their teaching obligations, thus denying them of the time to modify their teaching methods in tandem with the educational reform model.

In the end, the so-called educational reform is just some minor changes to the existing model without any drastic overhaul of the system. This is the substance of the issue whether to keep or abolish UPSR. Some of the most fundamental problems remain unsolved, and the old attitude and mentality have yet to be changed. Abruptly ending UPSR could bring more damage than the desired results.

School education has been deeply impacted by the ravaging pandemic. From last March to this March, majority of schools in the country were closed as home learning took the place of classroom learning, with UPSR canceled.

Year 6 students in 2020 did not have to take the UPSR exam and could proceed to secondary school based on their Year 4 to 6 school exam results. Many people therefore think that UPSR has been abolished without realizing that the suspension was only a temporary measure in the midst of the pandemic.

Will this affect the students? The situation last year should serve as a good reference, but sadly there have not been a lot of discussions on this matter thus far.

In the absence of UPSR and a comprehensive alternative solution in place, we have seen the emergence of some of the problems which we have so long overlooked.

Many parents have discovered a dearth of objective benchmarks in the placement of primary school graduates in secondary schools. UPSR is still the predominant benchmark in student admission in some government secondary schools, high performance schools and boarding schools. Therefore, we mustn't think that doing away with UPSR will not have much impact on education just because the potential problems not yet show up.

UPSR is still a reference-rich tool to judge a student's primary school education level although the evaluation criteria need to be refined, with less emphasis on grading, so that it can more accurately reflect the standard of education as well as the student's learning capacity and their command of skills.

In view of this, the education ministry needs to specify clearly whether UPSR will still be held for Year 6 students this year. At least the school authorities, students and their parents need to know whether it is on or not. Has the ministry conducted a postmortem on the temporary suspension of UPSR last year and the impact from such a measure? Has it collected views from various parties and done any in-depth analysis on the data collected? In view of the unpredictable pandemic, it is absolutely necessary for the authorities to map out effective strategies to deal with this matter.

With new infection clusters involving schools on the rise, parents are becoming increasingly worried. Unfortunately the edification and health ministries as well as the MKN have failed to reach an agreement on whether to keep the students at school. No decisions have been announced on major educational issues, including UPSR, too.

Lastly, the same question: as we are now into the second quarter of 2021, is this year's UPSR exam still on?