A+

Is this a joke for the government? The standard of the SPM examination should be raised. There is no way you can produce so many A+ students compared to that of several decades ago. You just wanted to show that the education ministry did an excellent job by giving out A+ to many students. This abusing of SPM was after the fact that most people now have secured free pass in the SPM examination. If all these A+ students were true, we are already a country full of genius people.

Saturday June 5, 2010
Too many top scorers, too few PSD scholarships
By LOH FOON FONG
newsdesk@thestar.com.my

KUALA LUMPUR: It is not possible to award Public Services Department (PSD) scholarships to all of the SPM straight-A students because there are too many of them.

Deputy Education Minister Datuk Dr Wee Ka Siong said 7,800 students obtained straight As while the PSD could only offer 1,500 scholarships.
Engrossed: Pupils Lai Siew Shan (left) and Chin Xin Yee looking at a book at the Read Malaysia fair in Kuala Lumpur yesterday.

However, MCA president Datuk Seri Dr Chua Soi Lek and Dr Wee, who is also MCA Youth chief, said they had appealed to the PSD during a recent meeting to give out more scholarships in view of the high number of top scorers.

During the meeting with PSD director-general Tan Sri Ismail Adam, Dr Chua and Dr Wee brought up the case of 1,304 top SPM scorers who did not get scholarships from the department.

“Currently, 1,500 scholarships are given out, 214 to students with A+s,” said Dr Wee after launching the Read Malaysia 2010 book fair yesterday.

Dr Wee hoped that in future students with the most number of A+s would be given priority in the awarding of scholarships.

He also said that the DAP should not hit out at him because the awarding of the scholarships was not under his ministry.

At the book fair, Dr Wee said that the Malaysian Reading Profile Study 2005 by the National Library found that the number of books read by Malaysians in the past 10 years improved to two books each a year compared to the average of only two pages in 1996.

“Despite the improvement, the figure is still minimal for a nation that has a population of 28 million, and we hope Malaysians will also choose books that are of substance to read,” he added.