Sometimes, when I wake up every morning I wonder whether I am in “middle earth”. I don’t listen to RTM/TV3/NTV news nowadays, in fact I have stopped listening to them since 2008 as they treat us like a bunch of fools.
Yesterday I suddenly came across this piece of news that was the main news of the day. High Performance Schools???????
Now, what criteria did they use to select these schools? Were there an independent committee created to select these schools? Oh, sorry, it must be under Official Secret Act (OSA).
Do you find something fishy in the list provided? Well, I do.
First of all, I think boarding schools should never be included. As you know, boarding schools only take the top UPSR/PMR students who did not get a place in MARA colleges. Furthermore , it is open to only 1 race. Again, welcome to 1Malaysia malaysian style!
I am sure you know where I am getting to. Out of 20 schools, 10 were boarding schools. If you look at their names, you know that these schools are reserved for one particular race. Please look at the remaining 10 schools? What do you see? I am sure you know what I am trying to say. Bandar Baru Uda in JB is a premier Malay élite housing area. Thus, understandably, 95-98% of the students are from 1 particular race. What happen to Sekolah Sultan Ismail (the top secondary school) in Johor? disappeared from the radar of our education ministry? I never even heard Sek Tun Fatimah as an excellent school before.
Students who excel can jump classes? It looks like only these schools are going to have excellent students. What about excellent students in other schools? isn’t this discrimination?
Welcome to 1Malaysia, 2 system!!!!!
please continue to screw up our education system!!!!
PUTRAJAYA: An annual budget of nearly RM1mil besides allowing students to finish school a year earlier were among the “prizes” awarded to the country’s first ever 20 high performance schools. The principals will also be given the option to select 20% of their student intake.
The schools’ management would also have the flexibility to re-assign staff who under-performed, and pay overtime and performance incentives.
In announcing the 20 schools yesterday, Deputy Prime Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin said this was to create innovation in the management of schools and improve students’ productivity.
“These schools will be given the flexibility in their curriculum, student intake and management of staff based on performance,” he said during a press conference at his office.
Citing an example, he said a Year One pupil of a high performance school, who was academically excellent, could be given the option of skipping a year after consultation with his parents.
On the flexibility of the curriculum, he said the schools could make changes after a thorough consultation with all involved, including the ministry and parents.
Muhyiddin said high performance schools would receive a lump sum grant at the start of each school year.
“They could get just below RM1mil to do what they think is needed,” he said, adding that the budget details were being worked out.
Muhyiddin, who is also Education Minister, said of the 20 schools, 10 were fully residential, four secondary and six primary (see list).
The schools, he added, were selected based on their outstanding academic achievements, extra-curricular activities and niche areas
Pagalavan's Avatar 
Can I make some correction? Actually boarding schools take smarter students than mara colleges. If a student thinking about entering mara colleges and he sure he’ll get very good result in his pmr, then fill up only mara colleges form, if he fill up both forms, the boarding school surely will take him first after he got straight A’s. The boarding school has priority to choose their students, and leave other students with less A’s to mara colleges. I was a boarding school’s student , entered during form 4 intake. All the new students were straight A’s scorer. Of course, in our system leaks are everywhere. Boarding school like malay college and STAR took students not according to academic, but ……In short, you need to have all A’s to enter boarding not like mara colleges, even 4 A’s students can be there.
Thank you. Be honest to admit your mistake…
Thank you for your comment. I am not sure what is happening nowadays but way back in 1980’s, MARA was the first choice for all top Malay students. Boarding schools were reserved for good rural malay students where there are no secondary schools. Unfortunately, all these changed in 1990’s, hijacked by urban people who will obviously do better than rural students, in general. Whatever it is, boarding schools should not be included in “high performance” school list since there is already a selection bias!
Yes ,agree with dr pagalavan.If there’s already bias on selection,they are not qualified as high performance schools!
I don’t know if you know someone who only gets 4A’s in MARA colleges, at least nowadays. But as far as I know, to get into MARA colleges, you have to obtain 5A’s for UPSR and minimum 6A’s in PMR(the student must get an A for both Science and Mathematic). Pardon me if I’m mistaken, but that is how things work now…
Firstly u must know some of them, who are getting 6a’s and 5a’s in UPSR or PMR, out of “bias-ness”. i have heard, a’s were given for some students with lower marks comparing to other “individuals”. in other words, they play with your results and ….being unfair!! and these straight a students cant even speak proper english, but end up as scholars in US, Uk……
Rei-0, you’re right. You need to have 5A’s in UPSR and 6A’s (Science and Mathematics must be A) in PMR to get into MSRM. For Sekolah Berasrama Penuh (Boarding School), you need to have full 8A’s in PMR. But students often give preference to MSRM (Maktab Sains Rendah MARA) because of its their priority to continue in MARA colleges and subsequent in foreign universities under MARA scholarship.
I agree with you about the bias. But if you never heard that Sekolah Tun Fatimah as an excellent school before, meaning you never read newspaper before!!STF is also one of the boarding school. In fact, it is actually one of premier boarding school(cream of the cream).
Actually being a student of high performance school is quite tough for both the students and the teachers themselves.In order to become the school enlisted in the listing above, everybody had to work hard and spent their time partially in these school`s education .Please understand.
I got no issue regarding the ordinary schools but boarding schools should never be listed. There is already a selection bias in these boarding schools where only the top UPSR or PMR students are included. That is what I am trying to say!
Theres’s actually pros and cons of the existence of the boarding schools (be it MARA or otherwise). The selection bias that has been emphasized here actually help the smart student with straight A’s in their examination to excel in their their study as the environment in the boarding school and the daily school is far different. The students in these school tend to help each other, together with their teacher’s effort to be the best. Hence, their school is worth the praise. But the situation is far different in daily school, as the number of students who really strive for their excellence is fairly small than those who do not. Some of these good/smart student sometimes are easilly affected by their friends and thus involves themselves with negative activity. In addition, there are numbers of teachers(not all) in the daily school who became fed up with their student who do not wish to study at all and causing troubles at school(even if their parents are aware of this), which makes the teacher to lose their motivation to educate the students.
But still, the sometimes, people can’t just say that those who are in boarding school are very fortunate as to be taught by motivated teachers and so on. There are also cases where the teachers think too highly of their student in boarding school and think that even if they don’t teach the student well, they’ll succeed. In the end, it’s the student themselves who has to struggle for their own glory.
But yes, of course the boarding school with these selected student will monopolize the list. And about the race issue, I don’t know if you’re informed about this or not, but the boarding school, even the MARA colleges have non-Malay students. And! Really, Sek Tun Fatimah is really one of those popular school, for ages ages already:) Actually there’s also a list of “Sekolah Harian Terbaik”…:(
Thanks for the comment. Yes, I do know that MARA and boarding schools take non-Bumi students but only less than 10%, from 2003 onwards. Prior to that, it was 0%. At the same time, I know of non-Bumi students who were accepted into MARA colleges decided to leave halfway because of certain discrimination issues. The first batch of non-Bumi Mara students had tough time after SPM as they were not given any scholarship or further opportunites unlike the Bumi students(who got worst results). This even appeared in the newspaper and many of the parents were not happy as they were not even eligible for Form 6.
Of course, having all the best brains in one school will make the school excell no matter how good the teachers are. No doubt about it and that’s the reason we should not include them in the list. It would be better if we abolish MARA and boarding schools and send back all these students to the normal sekolah kebangsaan. It will definately improve the performance of the normal schools. Malaysia is among the very few countries in the world who still has this system. We should never discriminate schools by having selection bias in the first place.
Yep, you have a point there, but please think again. What if, there’s smart student, who really wants to study, but came from a very poor family, lives in suburban area, which his/her house is around 8km or more from school, have no transportation to use instead of walking by feet, got sick and old parents, don’t have money to eat, let alone to buy books and don’t even mention the reference books (which costs lots of money), doesn’t have the chance to enjoy other BASIC facilities like other people would, etc. etc… How can they continue to succeed in this kind of environment? Again, yes, there are people who have passed these kind of trials but still, don’t you think MARA colleges and boarding schools which have lots of facilities(FYI, MARA even give pocket money to poor students) actually help these gifted students to concentrate on their study and have a better life for their family, instead of continuing to help their parents rubber tapping, which will be continued by their own children and so on, without actually learn how to improve their standard of living.
hmm…I think you can guess which race’s children is often stuck in this situation (I mean the MAJORITY of it, around the country, including SABAH&SARAWAK). BTW, let’s not bring the race issue. It’s not very healthy, if done excessively, like medicines 🙂 (but medicines are bad if TAKEN excessively:)
About the list… I’m thinking of–if the MOE make it this way; one list for MARA colleges and boarding school, and another one for normal school(or more for other type of school). And to compare the performance of both boarding schools and the normal one, they just have to analyse the overall between the those lists. That way, there’ll be no bias, am I right??
Yes, the main intention when MARA and boarding schools were set up was exactly for the students that you have just described. However, this was hijacked in the 1980’s by the urban bumiputeras. If you notice that majority of the students in boarding schools and MARA colleges currently are NOT from rural areas that you have just mentioned. They are from urban well to do families. I had mentioned about this in one of my postings somewhere. I even have my colleague who is a specialist in a private hospital in JB whose daughter got straight As in UPSR , just got accepted to a boarding school in KL. Another doctor’s son also got accepted to a boarding school which is just 10 min away from his house!! So, is this fair?
Currently , most rural areas, at least in Peninsular Malaysia have primary and secondary schools and thus it is not necessary to send them elsewhere. It was different in 1970s when the boarding schools and MARA colleges were introduced. These shools should be reserved for people who you had just described BUT it is not happening!! The wealthy and urban people are occupying all MARA and boarding schools. Please do a survey and you will know. I have many wealthy Malays staying in my housing area and all their children are either in boarding school or MARA colleges , receiving all the monetory benefits
Just to share an email that I just received few days ago, saying exactly what I have been saying:
im sorry i send u 2 emails
just want 2 say that i was from a boarding school in kl
when i was in f4, i was shocked to know that many of my seniors are filthy rich
some of them r ank dato’s
theres a lot of businessmans children there
i thought sbp’s r only 4 those who r poor or come from a moderate-income family
the same goes to mrsm
i have a fren who has a fren that has ferrari, of course with a driver!
that makes me sad
4 ur information my father’s a teacher n my mother’s a housewife
thnk u doc
well in the recent 2011 SPM result, i found out most of my friends children get 9A, wow this must be what they call high performance. and these kids are not even the top 10 intheir school, they are the top 50 in their school and yet they ‘perform so well’. i guess this is good KPI for the education minister. i dare not think about the future of malaysian education, as we have produce too many jaguh kampong.
hai doc,
i was a boarding school’s student from sarawak. im an iban. well , im a new student in that school as i was selected to that school when i was in form 4. i was surprised to see that out of 100 student in form 4(my batch), only about 20 students including me were bumiputras of sarawak which were not malays . im not bringing up the racial issues, but i am telling the truth.i mean sarawak is a large state. the were a lot of other races such iban,bidayuh, kenyah , kayan ,penan and etc. other than malays who i believed to be excellent students, but out of these numerous brilliant student, only a few was selected to boarding school.this makes me wonder how exactly they selected us.so, does that means that even the quota for the bumiputras(other than malay-includes a lot of other races) in sarawak was smaller to be compare with bumiputras(malay-one race) .i thought it should be equal. most of the bumiputras(other than malay) came from rural areas. i think they should be given the opportunity to receive good education. they also need to socialize with students from different races. if more of these student are selected to boarding school, i will agreed with the 1 malaysia stuff. no offence. please correct me if im wrong. just wondering.
plus, i agreed that ordinary school and boarding school should not be listed together and yes i do understand that it is not easy to be in the list of high performance school but still i don’t think ordinary school should be listed together with boarding school. although i was one of the boarding school’s student, but i still think it was unfair because i know what if feels like to be an ordinary school’s student (for 3 years) and boarding school’s student(2 years).
thanks doc.
Bumiputeras are NOT equal, as you can see for yourself. Perhaps you may want to impart this newfound knowledge on to your parents and relatives for the coming GE13.
As far as I am concerned, the natives of sarawak and Sabah are being cheated on a daily basis. It is up to the younger generations to make them realise what is happening
Hello Doc,
I have a question you said that you joined Monash University did you lecture there ?
And as of 2014 which private medical colleges would you say are a wise choice to enroll into ?
Yes, I was senior lecturer in Monash from 2006 till 2010. try IMU, PMC or Monash
Thank you and what about Mahsa University ?
I have another question which not many people could give me a straight answer. If I were to specialize in the future in the UK or the US what qualifications would they be looking at ? I did not do A Levels I did South Australian Matriculation at Taylor’s SS 15
If your basic degree is NOT recognised elsewhere, you can’t specialise anywhere else!
It’s recognized thank you doctor 🙂
Is enrolling in mahsa university for medicine a good option ?
No graduates yet thus difficult to comment.
Thank you again doctor
Where did you get that news?
what news?