I NOTICE that the number of students getting As and 1As is increasing with the years.

A few explanations can be given for this – the total number of students is increasing, the students are getting smarter, the government is becoming more lenient in terms of passing the students.

I believe the last to be true.

This is not fair to extremely good students because a scholarship sponsor will consider student “X” who gets an average score of 85 and gets straight A’s and student “Y” who gets an average score of 75 and also gets straight A’s as equal.

Student “X” may miss out. I think our education system currently fails to differentiate between “extremely good” students and “good” students. I think it will be fair if the Education Ministry can print the actual marks the students got on the certificate.

I think it is ridiculous for a student to take 17 or 18 subjects. Most countries only require a student to take 4 to 8 subjects.

Another alternative will to rank the students according to the percentile, like the Australian system.

In this way a sponsor can make a better decision.

Even for these brilliant students, I don’t think printing marks or ranking according to a percentile will affect them.

GG,

Taiping, Perak.

Source: The Star – January 9, 2008