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(a) Kementerian Pelajaran Malaysia (KPM) telah menetapkan markah yang diberikan kepada penglibatan murid sekolah dan pelajar Matrikulasi dalam kokurikulum untuk tujan permohonan ke universiti awam meliputi tiga bidang, iaitu Pasukan Badan Beruniform, Persatuan/Kelab dan Sukan/Permainan. Pemberian markah adalah berdasarkan kehadiran (50%), penglibatan (20%), pencapaian (20%) dan jawatan yang disandang (10%).

I can only comment on how it’s done in schools. In SMKDJ we used the exact same format.

Kehadiran takes 50% — this is fairly straightforward.

The ambiguity comes in for the rest.

Jawatan — there are only so many posts to go around, so pengerusi = 10 marks, naib = 9, etc. Normal members get 3 marks if I remember correctly.

Penglibatan — I forget how marks are awarded here.

Pencapaian — this is one of the worst categories, imo. Only if you represent the country to international competitions will you get the full 20 marks. If you win a national competition you get 18 marks or something.

Problems:

1. Almost no one gets 80% and above for an A for extracurriculars. The cumulative marks are the average of the three subfields: Badan uniform, Kelab, and Sukan. This means that to get an A average, you almost need to win national competitions in ALL THREE categories, which is stupid and almost impossible — no one has the time. It is almost always better to be a master of one than to be a jack of all trades, which is what the MOE’s criteria seem to emphasize.

2. Also notice that you can represent the country in International Math, Biology, and Physics Olympiads, but only ONE of them will count since there is only space for ONE club. So students who are amazing in one particular subject/field and not so in the others (i.e. great in sports but not so great in uniformed bodies) will suffer.

3. There is not enough flexibility in terms of awarding marks. For example if I were to win the IMPAC Dublin and MPH writing competitions, the marks will only count IF and only if I were a member of the English Club. They would not count if I were only a member of the Geography Club. Marks are awarded firstly based on the clubs you join, then your achievements that are pertinent to those clubs — which is entirely unfair.

4. Also we lack many many competitions and opportunities and funds — which accounts for the lack of pencapaian marks. Malaysia doesn’t send teams to many international competitions like the International Geography Olympiad, etc. Even for debating — last year Malaysia just sent their first team in about 7 years to the World Schools Debating Competition. So if your passion happens to be in a not-so-popular field, too bad for you lah.

5. Also the marks do not reflect the effort and energy put into extracurriculars. Who is to say that being a Scout leader is worth more points than representing your school to a public speaking competition? Or vice versa? Some things cannot be quantified.

6. Also take into account that those who go for NS get the full 10 marks for extracurriculars (I’m not sure about this, will check). If this is true then the whole system is greatly subverted.

7. Too many activities do not fit in the system. If you volunteer at the local old folks’ home. for example, you have no way of categorising your activity.

All in all it was a farce lah. I didn’t care about the marks — I even skipped all meetings for the uniform bodies because we learnt nothing — which means I failed my Badan Beruniform portion.

I think a better way is for students to write their resumes, then for the MOE to categorise the resumes by bands which can be converted into scores (Excellent, Strong, Mediocre, Weak). Then award the scholarships based partially on this. The quantifying of effort should come after a comprehensive survey of all extracurriculars, and not based on activities that are first categorised into Badan Beruniform, Kelab and Sukan.

by Andrew Loh.

Read more @ http://educationmalaysia.blogspot.com/2008/05/co-curricular-points.html

This entry was posted on Monday, January 31st, 2011 at 6:32 pm and is filed under Extracurricular Activities. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.