I wish to offer my views in response to the complaint sent in by ‘Parents of A’.

The parents of ‘A’ felt terribly upset that their child did not get a government scholarship to do dentistry. According to them, the child has scored 9 A’s and a B+ in the recent Sijil Pelajaran Malaysia (SPM) exam, so he deserved to be awarded a scholarship by JPA. Of course, they did mention the child’s excellence in the co-curriculum too.

Being a parent of three children who went through this particular episode (of trying hard to secure JPA scholarships 7–9 years ago) I wish to share my views with ‘Parents of A’. And the fact that I am a school teacher (an opportunity for me to witness cases of my Lower Six students who failed to secure scholarships), I am qualified to explain the mess you are in, Parents of A.

To begin with, I cannot say what your son’s real scores are - as you say - 9A’s. Did he get all 9 A+? There are many people out there who think that ‘A-‘ and ‘A’ are already ‘A’. But the actual A considered for scholarships by JPA is ‘A+’. So to put it plainly, the first selection criterion imposed by JPA is straight As.

Previously, those students who scored an ‘A-‘ in his or her string of As often had problems getting a JPA offer. This criterion of straight As is applied for critical (and of course, very popular) courses like medicine, dentistry and pharmacy. For those who were successful in courses such as accountancy, they might not have needed straight As. That is how the system operates.

Secondly, JPA now considers the student’s involvement in co-curricular activities, which I think is an effort to help the selectors’ task easier when they are faced with applicants having similar results. ‘Parents of A’ mentioned their child’s excellence in co-curricular activities, so being thus active (as compared to many of his peers who were not) he deserved to get an offer from JPA.

The parents are right about this. They have spent time bringing the child to school every day, money for extra pocket money and have had to forgo outside activities like tuition classes. But sad to say, many students these days are ‘active’ as many parents ensure that their children get involved in school activities so that they will have a better chance to get into public universities or get a scholarship.

Also, the schools themselves make sure that students are active because of the compulsory involvement in co-curricular activities imposed by the Ministry of Education a few years ago. Now every student has a special book to record all activities he or she takes part in.

So when there are so many active students out there and each school has different ways to measure the results of the student’s extra-curricular activities, the selectors might have to look at the applicant’s involvement at a much higher level – say district, state or national level.

So to parents who think that their children are ‘active in co-curricular activities’ (at school level), it might still not be enough, especially when things have become terribly competitive these days.

Finally, to ‘Parents of A’ and many others out there – especially to those who were born unfortunate – I would like to tell you that there is an Upper Six Science student in my school who scored 11 A’s (no A-) in the 2008 SPM and still did not get an offer from JPA.

And in the recent SPM, the second top boy of my school – with 10 A+, an A for Accounts and 11 A’s in total – did not make it.

So I have seen many cases of excellent Form Six students who did not get any JPA offer.