Instead of listening to the voices of the parents and students who will be affected by the latest Education Ministry ruling to stop the use of forecast results for the initial entry into foundation and pre-university programmes in private colleges and universities, the Education Minister II, Idris Jusoh, has chosen to defend this foolish decision made by his ministry.

The minister was quoted to have said that the prohibition against SPM students using their forecast results to enrol into private colleges is “nothing new”.

In addition, in a statement issued by the Education Ministry on Tuesday, Sept 29, 2014, the ministry said that to say that the forecast results “can no longer be used” is not accurate since only actual SPM results were needed to enrol for matriculation, pre-university and diploma courses approved by the ministry.

Firstly, let me respond that it is not accurate for the ministry to say that forecast results are used by private colleges and universities for enrolment into pre-university and foundation programmes.

It would be more accurate to say that initial entry into these programmes are based on forecast results but that continued enrolment is based on the students achieving the conditional offer given by their respective colleges for their actual SPM results. Hence, if students fail to achieve these results, they would not allow to continue in these programmes.

Secondly, the ministry was reported to have said that “it was concerned with the quality of services offered by the institutions and that the regulation follows the ‘best practices’ of the Malaysian Qualifications Agency (MQA)”.

If the ministry feels that using the forecast results for initial entry into pre-university and foundational programs are not consistent with “best practices”, it needs to made known the number and percentage of students who gain entry into these programmes but later do not fulfil the conditional offer.

According to statistics presented by the Malaysian Association of Private Colleges and Universities (MACPU), most schools reported a dropout rate due to the non-fulfilment of the SPM conditional offer at “less than 1 percent and 2 percent.” Some schools even reported 0 percent of non-fulfilment of the SPM conditional offer./

Thirdly, if the ministry feels that using the forecast results are somehow not consistent with ‘best practices’ i.e. meaning that some schools artificially increase the forecast results so that they are better than the resulting SPM result, then why not allow the use of the SPM trial results for initial entry into the foundation and pre-university programmes?

After all, SPM trial results are set by the Education Ministry and the ministry can always ask the private colleges and universities to verify the SPM trial exam results online.

Minimum requirement is only five credits

We must be aware that the minimum requirement set by the MQA for entry into pre-university and foundation programmes in private colleges is only five credits for any five SPM subjects. The likelihood that someone who is capable of obtaining five SPM credits in a trial exam and failing to achieve a similar standard for the actual SPM result is very low, as shown by the MACPU statistics above.

I strongly urge both education ministers to listen to the voice of the students and parents and also of that of their own colleague in cabinet - Wee Ka Siong - who has publicly disagreed with this policy. The use of SPM forecast results for the initial entry into pre-university and foundation programs should be restored.

If the ministry really has doubts about the accuracy and quality of using forecast results, the policy could easily be changed to using the official ministry-approved SPM trial results for initial entry into these programmes. The enrolment of these students can only be confirmed after their actual SPM results are released, which is the standard practice now.

ONG KIAN MING is DAP's Member of Parliament for Serdang.