LETTER | Some suggestions on how to compensate for lost schooling days

LETTER | The pandemic has caused havoc to every aspect of our lives – countless becoming jobless, schools closed, business activities restricted, marked changes in lifestyle and numerous other new norms.

For schoolchildren, online learning has been a completely new experience. In fact, online teaching has also been a new experience for teachers.

It is a well-accepted fact that online learning is not half as effective as attending classes physically. Even during normal lessons, we have students who are often caught not being attentive. What then do you expect of online learning?

Coupled with the restricted interaction opportunities during online sessions, the ultimate outcome is markedly reduced in terms of effectiveness. Online learning among students of public schools is simply pathetic as many teachers resort to dishing out ill-prepared lessons, simply to fulfil a requirement.

On the other hand, being on a remote mode, many students take advantage of this greater “freedom” and this does not help in their learning process. Others simply find that remote learning does not interest them. The much reduced effectiveness of online learning is also the general view of both students and parents, and this begs the question, “Where do we go from here?”

So far, we have heard of students advocating for the coming SPM exams to be scrapped as they feel that the lost schooling days have affected their learning and preparation for the exams.

As an educator, I would like to offer some suggestions. For this current SPM batch of students (due for SPM finals in November 2021), there is not much we can do to make up for the lost schooling days, and to be fair to them, some form of adjustments need to be put in place in order to offset the lost schooling days and yet ensuring that quality of learning is not greatly affected. Slapping them with the usual SPM exams in November without having compensated lost schooling days is rather unfair to them.

Instead of relying solely on the final SPM exam as the final assessment of the students' performance, have bimonthly tests on all subjects (online format till students are able to attend school physically).

Starting from March, (March, May, July and September), students would have four such tests and these four tests would account for, say, 30 percent (or 40 percent) weightage of his final grade. Trial exams may be shelved.

To ensure quality and to avoid disparity, these tests should be state-based, and all questions should be as close to the actual SPM format and standard as possible. To achieve this, teachers are to be given standardised guidelines as to the topics to be tested every two months way ahead and this will put pressure on both teachers and students to take online lessons seriously.

In this manner, students’ performance and quality are assured and standardising topics and tests is an effective way of ensuring minimal disparity.

To ensure its success, the strategy calls for good coordination between the state education department, the district education office and schools. It is time the Education Ministry and the state education office took a more proactive role in circumventing the havoc created by the pandemic.

I am sure many schools are left to their own devices and this situation is far from satisfactory.

The views expressed here are those of the author/contributor and do not necessarily represent the views of Malaysiakini.