The Latest Education Hoo-Haa to remove UPSR and PMR

This by no means is the first time the government has raised the issue for the abolishment of two age-old education examination practices in the world(reminiscent to the favourite English/Malay language issue); the examination conducted prior to primary students advancement into secondary schools, and the selection or preparation of students into the stream of studies deemed most appropriate for each based on their interest/capabilities and results.(The selection at this and any other stages, though, can still be changed by the students themselves at a later date or through other exams, again by their own performance).

I will not dwell on the usual arguments presented by most parties about the good and bad, pros and cons of having or not having these examinations.

Lets examine the bigger picture and consider the argument that the current system is too exam-oriented. Then let us consider the alternatives. What kind of changes would you like to make in order to have it otherwise. I personally could not imagine how else if not through examinations that we can ensure these students at the tender age, whether they are either in primary 6 or secondary third year, and around the age of 11-12 and 14-15 years of age respectively, be able to gain the knowledge, to enable them to pursue their education and career in the future. Perhaps our current minister of education would like these children(by any standard, they are still considered to be children, or does anyone choose to differ?), be sent on the streets to practice or learn their skills, if any?(Remember the smoking and lepak issues?) Is that what the education minister meant by practical?, so much so that they can still pursue their studies in their later years at universities. OK, maybe not on the streets but consider the alternatives and define what can be learn through practice for these adolescent kids at school, need I repeat "adolescent kids"?

If our education minister meant co-curricular activities, that again cannot, by any means, be the foundation upon which these children will gain knowledge sufficient to prepare them for their future, academic or otherwise. I do sincerely wonder if the education minister has even given it a thought, or has his recent outburst on the subject matter, some ulterior motives given the proximity of the coming general election? Say something controversial, take away or threaten to take away something beneficial from the public and then turn around and give it back, so as to appear benevolent to the public or appears sympathetic to the publics' opinion in order to gain their support. Holistic is a word thrown around like garbage in everybody's rubbish bin to justify the rationale behind the proposal to removal both exams. Perhaps someone ought to define the word holistic and what holistic education really means.

Again, on a bigger picture, is it because our education standard has fallen so far for the majority of the younger populace that the only way to keep them from ending up roaming the streets(after failing all these exams and failing to secure a place to further their studies) and to keep them in the system, at least, until they are old or mature enough to find decent work when they actually leave, in this case, at the age of 17? If that is the case then the education department has failed in its function and purpose !

Assuming that these examinations were abolished. Then, what would happen is a situation where every child, irrespective, will be able to pursue their studies, at least, up to secondary fifth year and at the age of 17.(Old enough legally to find work if necessary) That does sound good if one's child is a poor performer or does not do well in examinations(who else would fear examinations if not those who are poor in their academic performance?) but then what would happen to those children who does perform well? Would that not demoralised the good performers? I doubt very much that removal of these exam will, in any way, make the poor performers work harder in order to do better. After-all, it no longer matters if you do well or not. Every student will proceed right up to the fifth form anyway, able or unable. Would removal of these examinations also better prepare all of them for the outside/working world? Would that not make all the children become less competitive, more lazy? Ultimately, at the end of the day, the education system will be producing large number of secondary fifth year school leavers, all of whom are either below average, or at best, average performers into the nation's workforce. Is that not against the nation's objective to produce high salaried knowledge workers to achieve the 2020 vision?

I leave you with the final question. Would you change what has being proven to work through the ages, a process(education system) even the ministers themselves have gone through, and replace it with an unproven system on the whims and fancies of a minister who probably have some motives/agenda behind his outburst? Or perhaps the government is taking us, the public, for fools? But then again when you look at the kind of ministers that the old system is producing, perhaps we all should support the change!!! The way I see it, this is a simple case of, typical to Malaysia, when a department or the persons assigned a task failed, blame it on the system!

27th June 2010

The latest development and proposal to pass the buck to the education institution themselves to conduct their own assessment shows the inability of the education ministry/department to manage what they were meant to do in the first place.

So now, the schools are expected to conduct their own examinations. I wonder what is the underlying rationale for this. Imagine a common scenario where the standard of one school is higher than another. Who then decides on the level or grades for passing those exams or is there any homogeneity in the grading of these students coming from different schools with different quality? Is the education ministry trying to manipulate the passing of poor students who cannot even read or write at third year secondary into higher forms ? Does that mean the ministry is henceforth absolve from all responsibilities if there were unfair or fraudulent practices conducted in some schools for the sake of having a decent and reputable number of passes? But then again if the ministry is going to be monitoring these exams, why then, should they not be conducting the exams as well. It like the ministry is hoping to manipulate the results but letting the schools take responsibilities if they were caught.

My personal experience in a Malaysian University: OUM

OUM started with with a very impressive and age old adage that age should not be a barrier to education: in short; lifelong education but thats about all there is to the university; All lip service and hand me your money. I presume there will not be all that much of a difference from the other similarly based universities unless I hear someone speaks of one that is different I assume non exists. After your registration when you received the books that accompanies a PhD programme(I have since dropped out and I am glad) sucks first because its like the photocopies I can do better at any photocopy shop and theirs probably comes without copyright acknowledgements but this gets worse when you discover that the books have multiple pages repeated in different parts of the book so as to make it appears thick!!(Now how thick, pun intended, can a university be) and yes! it gets even more worst when you found out that the books are full of errors and wrong information. I bought a couple of books(published by McGraw Hill, Thomson, Salkind, etc.) from MPH on the same subject to verify. Lecture times are spent with life stories from the lecturer, none remotely related to the subject in study, and for any questions, please write an email and we will respond as soon as possible, does not ring too convincing then and rightly so, for nobody ever care to respond to my emails.

So registration and tuition fees snugly in their pocket, they decided to conduct a PhD Colloquium which I managed to escape from being ripped off(I'll explain later) due to my travel and work commitments. I was fool enough to register for the 2nd PhD Colloquium and found out to my disappointment that it was not to discuss problems and issues face by PhD and Masters students but a venue for the so-called Prof. Dr. to extol their greatness, their wisdom and their sob stories of how and what hardship they had gone through to complete their PhDs. Questions related to any study issues or problem are brushed aside with the comment that we should write emails to them and that they will then get back to us as soon as possible.

The whole colloquium was occupied for the morning and a major part of the afternoon by a "Prof Dr" Nagarajah and a "Prof Dr" Chung who even had to go beyond his allocated slot to tell us his sob stories so much so that the only useful part of the whole colloquium was reduced to a less than 20 minutes session with another Dr. who at least seems to be contributing something useful to us students but for the lack of time, thanks to a stupid self indulging idiot of a Prof Dr who think his idiotic past is something he can be proud of and needs to be broad casted to the world!

Having spoken to a number of their so-called Dr. and Professors, both in the administration and academic capacities, I have come to conclusion from the shallowness of their thoughts and discussions,(reading from the text!) to the arrogance of their attitudes, I sincerely doubt their qualifications or status were obtained via the usual processes or based on their academic merits or achievements.

So my recommendation to any potential student who has a genuine interest in pursuing further studies, with a genuine institution providing genuine courses with legitimatequalified academics, to avoid OUM, irrespective of how attractive their fees my appear to be.

Differences Between Degrees Awarded from Different Countries

There are many differences in degrees acquired from different countries such as the main four we are more commonly used or have more access to,that is, British universities, Australian Universities, American universities and own homegrown Malaysian universities.

The most stringent irrespective of their individual ranking within their own education systems is without any doubt British universities afterwhich comes the Australian univeristies, American and lastly Malaysian universities.

British Universities

Entry level to first degree programme would require Pre-matriculation qualification, or a Form 6 level pass as is known in Malaysia.

Entry level into Masters programme would require a 1st Class or a 2nd Class Upper Division qualification before in most case an invitaion will be extended to the prospective student to take up the Masters programme, with or without grant/scholarship and some may even require a minimum of 5 years working experience on top of all the other requirement depending on the discipline.

Entry level into the Doctorate would certain require a first degree, a masters and at least a 10 years working experience depending again on the discipline chosen, however there are ocassion where students who excel in their first degree are offered a place to do their doctorate(without having to do their Masters) usually in the field of research and again that is based on the disciple one has chosen.

Australian/New Zealand Universities

Entry level is pretty much the same as the British universities but with less stringent conditions. They act as a catchnet for those who are not the cream of the top performers and those who may have performed, due to extenuating circumstance, below their usual expectation and capabilities. It is a blessing in disguise for some but a bane for others as now they have to intermingle with less than the best.

Entry level in their Masters is the most questionable as years of working experiences can now be simply converted into some form of entry permit. I spoke with a few Professors in various universities in UK and they find it rather amusing that this can be academically accepted. Nevertheless they stressed that this sort of Masters will not be recognised in the UK. I had the experience of having some of my student who completed their Australian Masters degree returning back to college to do their first degree because their employers were asking for it !! That speaks volumes for the general acceptance of such Masters.

Entry level into their Doctorate programmes are pretty much the same without prior qualification one can simply converts one's experiences to gain entry into their PhD programmes. Only one twist to this story, they do not always called it PhD as in Doctor Of Philosophy, in fact as far as I can recall they never did but they did coined a totally new disciple called Doctor of Business Administration, or Doctor of "whatever other discipline" from which when one can qualifies, and nontheless, graduates are being address as "Dr. So and So".

American Universities

One that the Malaysian education system aspires to emulate because it is the easiest and the quickiest though I personally have serious reservations about the quality.

The American government, due to the war, the unemployment rates, poor economy(similarity can be drawn here with the Malaysian situation except for the corruption and the racial bit), decides that they will do away with exams for the critical years, like Primary 6, Form 3, Form 5 and Form 6(Upper), as is known in Malaysia, so that, firstly, they will keep their students in the system until they have acquire a basic first degree and secondly, by then hopefully, the war would be over and the economy would have improve and it did ! In order to enable all this auto-progression, standards are necessrily lowered and so all Americans are armed with a basic first degree when they graduated.(that is if they do not drop out first somewhere in between.)

With the exception of the more well-known and prestigeous university like Harvard, Preston, Yale, MIT, Princeton, Cornell and few other I need not name all, the universities churn out the population all with a minimum of a degree and to do so requires that as long as you attend a certain percentage of all your classes, hand in all your assignments and get reasonable marks for what is now known as coursework, examinations are no longer the crux upon which your entire future/career rests on or whether you will proceed higher up academically. There was at one time and I am not so sure if it has stopped yet, students(especially female) are at the mercy of their lecturers and are willing to do almost anything to secure a pass in their coursework leading to their exploitation naturally.(it was in the news quite a while back)

From the first degree to Masters and or PhDs or even Doctor of "whatever", the same methods are employed but like I repeat, not all reputable universities practises what I describe here and not all universities that practises what I describe here are irreputable. A lot despite their methods of progression up the academic ladder still does excellent research work and produces excellent personalities. With the current government and private fundings a lot of American Universities are doing thier part in the progression and success of humanity.

Malaysian Universities

Speaking from personal experiences, with all the hoohah about fake PhDs, Express, bought PhDs in the recent newspapers, I think we missed out one very important factor...the quality of the PhD. I have heard, read, being told, that you can make anybody into a graduate but you can never make a graduate into anybody(of substance or quality or of any desirable trait that is needed for a job or work, to perform well or to lecture or just administer an office!!)

When I was studying in UK(more than 30 years ago), my mentor grab me by the hand and asked if I was on a Malaysian scholarship to which I replied that mine was a British scholarship. I queried him as to why he asked me such question and he replied that the Malaysian government had requested 30 marks to be the passing rates for all Malaysian Government sponsored students to the university. I retorted that this would only lower the standard and reputation of the university in question and he replied that this is why they have decided against acceding to the request and subsequently lost the Malaysian government sent scholars(Thank God for that!!) I supposed the students eventually ended up somewhere across the Atlantic!! Now imagine for more that 30 years for each year 3 semesters and each semester Malaysian government sent just 200 hundred or more such students, how many substandard qualified personnel we have now, some of which are probably running if not heading government departments and universities. Again I am not saying that everyone passed their exams with just 30 marks, except for the really smart ones, how many stooges do we actually have, no one knows.

Now back to Malaysian Univeristies. There is a lot of political and racial overtones in the acceptance into such universities especially the public ones which I could not care less to discuss here. The one I am writing will be the mushrooming private univerisities like Segi, Inti, FTMS, Sunway, LKW, Taylor and especially so with the more recent one like WOU and OUM. My personal experience comes solely from OUM which is none too recent and very unpleasantly to say the least!!

These universites generally entices you with promises of anything and admittance with the barest and lowest requirements whether its for a diploma, a first degree, a Masters, a PhD, purely to get you to register...that leads to payment of registration fees, tuition fees, books, library access and or whatnot, after that it's all lip service. What irks me most is when they publish in the local newspaper that you will get a free laptop, a free ipod, a free godknowswhatelse, it mean you will get it only when you completed payment of your fees in full for the entire programme !! Now how's that for being tricky? Then there is one(FTMS) that guarantees employment but only with their own holding accounting firm which will in turn exploit the top student with the lousiest of pay and remuneration in the name of "training".

To have some idea of what private univeristies in Malaysia is like read my next article on "My personal experience in a Malaysian University: OUM"

Integrity of Education Institutions in Sarawak

Institutions of higher education in Sarawak are generally confined to a few larger institutions of student population varying from 500 to a couple of thousands whereas the smaller one having population of less than 500. This blog is primarily concerned with the integrity of these institutions mostly private although vetted and regulated by the local education ministries and departments and other quality control bodies. The word "institution of higher education" encompasses those institutions that offer courses beyond the secondary level within the context Malaysian education systems. The concern though describe here merely as the "integrity" includes the honesty, the administrative nuances and all that which would be of concern to all potential, as well as existing, students, who may be considering entry into or are already pursuing a course with these institutions respectively. The larger institutions are as follows:



Curtin offering Diplomas and degrees

Swinburne offering Diplomas and Degrees

Segi Diplomas and Degrees

Inti Diplomas and Degrees

UCSI Diplomas and Degrees

Sunway Diplomas and Degrees Accounting ACCA/CIMA

FTMS Diplomas and Degrees, Accounting ACCA/CIMA

Informatics Diplomas and Degrees Predominantly IT and related disciplines

Of all these institutions some are dubious in practices either in their administration or in their methods of delivery while others have questionable methods of examination or , hence the integrity of such institutions in Sarawak generally. Overall it translate into whether the diplomas or degrees are up to standard or even valid al all. The question whether private institutions can ever replace public institutions of higher education never arises.

FTMS
For instance the fact that FTMS is known and proven to be questionable is its method of teaching and delivery where questions and answers are provided for students who are sitting for their coming ACCA exams. The reason for such act was solely to increase the passing rates of FTMS as a ACCA tuition provider so that FTMS can be label as a "Premier" provider of ACCA tuitions. The fact that they were actually caught by investigating officers who flew in all the way from Scotland(due to complaints by students) and the subsequent removal of its "Premier" status goes to show that cheating is never a means to an end. For that very same reason FTMS is now attempting to switch to CIMA of late, as having the present ACCA "Gold" label does not clear the cloud of doubt in its integrity and practice.

One of the main principle of being an ACCA accountant is the "Chartered" label which ensure the integrity and honesty of such an Accountant. The fact that the Principal and owner of FTMS who himself is an ACCA "Chartered" Accountant, or so-called Fellowship of ACCA(FCCA), who is supposed to uphold such integrity and honesty, is the chief architect in the fradulent practice of providing questions and answers to students for coming ACCA exams, and still is, places the whole establishment under doubt that it will not do the same for CIMA exams and likewise any other courses it may offer.

Segi

For those who need to seriously look into the quality of the education they are getting and for the parents who will be paying their hard-earned money for the sake of their childrens' future. You will be horrified to know that there have being a lot of dubious going-ons in the Segi group of colleges as shortlisted below:

1. Fake or falsified syllabus created for the education board and ministries inspectors.

2. Fake or prepared teaching plan and scheduled purely fabricated to satisfy inspectors

3. Staffs and students other than those who are supposed to be in class, sat in class over the duration of the inspectors visit to provide misinformation and mislead the inspectors and give false answers their questions(staffs and students are coached in advance)

4. Books are borrowed from vendors just to fill up libraries for the duration of the inspectors' visit after which they were returned to vendors.

5. Student activities room is a temporary set up for the duration of the inspection and then dismantled after the inspection.

6. The most serious of all, each and every lecturers are told at the risks of losing their jobs if they don't comply, to represent a number of students and fake all the examination transcripts(rewrite their examination papers) for all the exams each student sat for, in order to alter their passing grades or failures.

7. Timetable for the whole year are fictitious and not followed in the least. The timetables were created purely for the inpection as well.

The rationale behind these practices may be administrative corruption or just pure poor management or for the sake of financial gain or other fradulent excuses I dread to guess but for whatever reasons I personally cannot justify sacrificing the students integrity and honesty and especially their future to become contributing citizen of Malaysia. I understand that the above was practice in all the Segi group of colleges and dates back even when Segi was a collection of group consisting of IBMS, Systematic, etc..

OUM

Managed by a bunch of incompetent fools who only think highly of themselves. The academics are just as unqualified as a bunch of mental cases and some are even egoistic about it ! The administration does not have any grasp as to what the place is doing or what is actually happening in the establishment. They failed to realise that most of todays students are no longer immature young students who knows next to nothing about what they are studying but are mostly self supporting working adults who probably make more than any of those so-called lecturers made in a year and probably know a lot more then they let out to be!

More to come...