Argumentative Essay

School-Based Assessment in Malaysia

            The new school-based assessment (PBS) system is one of the form of assessment that have holistic value which is counted the cognitive aspect (intellect), affective (emotion and spiritual), psychomotor (physical) and social concord with the Falsafah Pendidikan Kebangsaan. This PBS system assessed the process and product with formative and summative which used the concept of assessment for learning and assessment of learning. The improvement of PBS system is implemented in 2011 for standard 1 and form 1 in 2012. But rumors has it, this PBS system is not well implemented and therefore are causing more disadvantages rather than advantages.

            Firstly, the reason why most of the lower secondary school students cannot accept the changes which is from the examination system to PBS system is that, students are losing out under the new school-based assessment (PBS) system as many teachers are forced to skip topics. According to the President of National Union of the Teaching Profession (NUTP), Tuan Hashim Adnan, said many teachers are concentrating only on certain topic which will be assessed under the system. For instance, if there are ten topics in history, but only five are assessed, some teachers take a shortcut and focus only on that five topics, this is for the sake of saving time. Just imagine, in the end, the students lose out because they learn less.

            Not only that, the teachers may be biased towards some students when evaluating students. Let say that this particular teacher have some sort of problem with a student she is about to asses; There is slight possibility that the teacher may be holding a grudge towards the students. Hence, she will put any band for the student as she would like. For example, there are 6 bands to evaluate the students. She might put the student she has problem with the lowest band ever which is 6, even though the student performed well for their assessment. All this due to the fact that your own teacher will be evaluating you and your future is in their hand.

            On the other hand, there will be lack of competition amongst them students and less interest in studies. All this due to the reason that students will have no real focus for their assessment rather than the previous Malaysia’s examination which are UPSR, PMR, and SPM. When kids do not have competition between them, it will be hard for them to boost themselves in their studies. As a result, students’ progression will be hard to follow and maintain.

            As for the conclusion, I strongly believe that the new school-based assessment (PBS) system brings more disadvantages rather than advantages. According to findings at Sekolah Menengah Kebangsaan Buloh Kasap, 75% of their students strongly disagree if the PBS band system continued, and they also agreed that this type of system will give out negative impact towards not only to the students in the future, but towards teachers and school’s progression.