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MCA, Gerakan, MIC and SUPP Minister should stop shirking their responsibilities and get Cabinet on Wednesday to set up independent educationist panel to propose fairest formula for university admission in May and decide on a common university entrance examination for all public universities by 2005


Media Statement
by Lim Kit Siang

(Penang,  Monday): The joys and rejoicing over the record-setting Sijil Tinggi Persekolahan Malaysia (STPM) 2002 results - with an unprecedented number of 624 candidates scoring grade A for all the five or four subjects taken, compared to 430 students in 2001, i.e. 40 with 5As and 584 with 4As in the 2002 STPM compared to 34 candidates with 5As and 396 with 4As in STPM 2001 - have swiftly given way to apprehension, anxiety, frustration and downright despair.

Apprehension and anxiety about whether there would be justice and fair play in the selection and admission to the public universities, while frustration and downright despair at the injustice and unfairness of the STPM 2002 results.

In fact, hanging over the heads of the STPM students as they prepared for the examination last year was the worry as to whether there would be a repetition of last year's national scandal over the public university selection system as the result of the introduction of a "merit-based system" which had absolutely no merit with the Education Ministry totally unable to convince anyone that the formula used to match the matriculation results and the STPM was not unfair, arbitrary and unprofessional - or not akin to comparing an apple with an orange.

The "merit-based" university selection system last year was introduced to replace the quota system of 55% bumiputra, 35% Chinese and 10% Indian university student intake, which had been seriously violated in actual practice. But it introduced a new and greater injustice, with bumiputra student intake of 68.9 per cent or 13.9% higher from the 55:45 bumiputra-non bumiputra quotas as the result of a most unprofessional, unfair and arbitrary formula matching two completely different examinations - the STPM results and matriculation grades.

On the same day as the release of the STPM 2002 results, the Malaysian Examination Council (MEC) chief executive Termuzi Abdul Aziz announced a "new system" to grade the 2002 STPM results to correspond with the cumulative grade point average (CGPA) of the matriculation system for purposes of admission selection into the public universities this year.

There is nothing new in the "new system" used to match the STPM results with matriculation grades, as the same basic formula used last year has been retained except with the further refinement to have 11 grades of comparison between the two examinations when last year there were seven - but the fundamental objections that such a comparison and matching was unprofessional, unfair and unacceptable remain intact!

The Cabinet on Wednesday should reject the MEC rehash of the formula last year to match the two completely different examinations and establish a panel of independent and distinguished educationists to propose a transparent formula which could be accepted as the most fair, impartial and professional in the present circumstances as a common yardstick for selection and admission to the public universities in May.

The MCA, Gerakan, MIC and SUPP Ministers should stop shirking their responsibilities by speaking up in Cabinet on Wednesday to demand that there should not be a repetition of last year's university selection/admission scandal by using an unfair and unprofessional formula to match the two-year STPM results with the one-year matriculation grades and to formally propose a panel of independent and distinguished educationists to produce the most fair, impartial and professional formula in the circumstances.

They should also ask the Cabinet on Wednesday to take a policy decision to end the annual educational furore over the public university selection by having a common university entrance examination for all public universities in Malaysia - either by having only STPM or matriculation for all university-bound students, or establishing a common university entrance examination for all pre-university students vying for places in the public universities, whether from the STPM or matriculation systems.

The common university entrance examination system should be introduced for all public universities latest by 2005.

(3/3/2003)


* Lim Kit Siang, DAP National Chairman