Putrajaya will stop giving the Form 3 Assessment this year

Malaysia – According to Senior Minister Datuk Radzi Jidin, the Education Ministry would stop utilizing the Form 3 Assessment (PT3) this year.

To replace formal testing, Radzi said his government would implement more school- and class-based evaluations.

The Covid-19 outbreak, which compelled schools to shut and lessons to move online, wreaked havoc on national exams, including the PT3.

“PMR (Penilaian Menengah Rendah) was first introduced in 1993, followed by PT3 in 2014.” However, no PT3 tests were conducted in 2020 or 2021.

“Many wondered whether the situation would be the same for those taking PT3 this year. “As a result, we have decided to fully cancel the test,” he stated today at a news conference at the Education Ministry in Putrajaya.

Instead, Radzi said that the tests will be replaced by a strengthening of school and classroom-based evaluations, in which children in grades 4 through 3 would be tested annually.

Classroom assessments, physical, sports, and co-curriculum evaluations, and psychometric tests will all be strengthened, according to him.

“In terms of strengthening continuous [formative] assessment, we will increase training programs for administrators and teachers to improve continuous assessment implementation in schools.”

“However, we will improve the final test of academic sessions for five chosen topics at the elementary school level and all subjects at the lower secondary level via annual assessments for the Summative Assessment [year end examinations].”

He went on to say that, in order to relieve teachers’ workload and standardize test levels throughout the country, the Ministry of Education (MoE) will create a bank of questions from which instructors might prepare for final year examination papers.

“The Ministry of Education will give summative assessments, final tests of academic sessions, and a bank of questions for all courses.

“This will make it easier for instructors to produce question papers in schools, as well as provide us with additional data to analyze the data from more than five million kids throughout the country,” he added.

Radzi emphasized that this new technique will enable instructors to properly analyze their pupils and identify any shortcomings they may have, as well as intervene with the help of their parents, if a kid really struggles with specific areas.

“The most essential thing is that we want to alleviate the strain that students receive from others while taking large tests like the PT3.” All that will be left are the final tests.

“We’ve had final examinations for years,” he added, “but now we’ll be updating it so that evaluations can be done more efficiently.”