Seeing first hand in Malaysian education system myself and now seeing my children going through the same system, I believe there are significant weaknesses in the system.

Students often are required to memorize facts and formula in their classes. Often teachers gave a lot of facts and formula for students to memorize.  The students will then be tested with the memorizing skills through multiple choice questions and short answer type of questions.  How many smart people do the system produce each year?  How come there are no smart Malaysians who invented the newest car, the newest technology.  All we see is students who are really good in memorizing facts/formula while do not know how to apply their skills to solve tomorrow’s problem.

Another related problem is students are often asked to learn how to write exams instead of learning. How many parents send their children to tuition centre hopefully they can do well in exams.  How many teachers teach their students how to write exams instead of passing knowledge to the students.  No doubt doing well in exams are important, but it should not be overlooked since doing well in exams does not guarantee one’s success in their lives.

Ranking system is another big problem. Students are ranked each year among their grade and they are placed in classes from the highest score students to the lowest score students.  I think the rational is to facilitate teaching when all students in a class is of about the same “standard”.  This maybe a good idea, but what about students who are late comers, who does not excel well in later years.  These students will be placed in lower ranking and in lower grade classes.  They may not ever have a chance to come back (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streaming_%28education%29).

Another problem of the education system is the huge amount of school works being assigned to students each day. Students are required to do lots of homeworks.  I know my daughter may take 3-4 hours a day to do homeworks and she is only 8 years old.  Homeworks is good, but too much does not make your children smarter, in fact, it is taking the time away from them to study and to do other outdoor activities.

However, the root cause of all the problems is the higher education entry requirements. To get to form 6, one has to score many A’s in SPM and a minimum of C in Malay.  Once a student got into form 6, he/she spent two years studying it, and if he/she gets a good result in STPM, he may be admitted to local university.  This sounds fine in theory, but it is the biggest flaw in the system.  Assuming that the student met the minimum requirement to enter university, he/she may not get admitted to the faculty he/she likes to pursue due to the infamous racial quote system (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Issues_in_Malaysian_Education#Racial_Quotas_in_Universities).

I do not deny that pressure students receive from parents are making the matters worse.  Parents are so focus on exams and it is not uncommon to see my daughter’s classmates get punished by their parents for not meeting their standards.  However, the major reason for this competitiveness are caused by the higher education entry requirements, huge school workload, ranking system at school, and teaching methods.

Other links:

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TIMSS

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