The current landslides and great loss in Cameron Highlands should serve as an awakening call to the education system in Malaysia. It is not good enough for the education minister to harp that “we are doing everything we can” to address the problems.

Each year the critical and defining national SPM and STPM examinations are held in November and December. It has been like this for as long as we can remember and all through the Barisan Nasional’s rule.

Little did our Education Ministry, its leaders and policymakers take serious note of the  changing weather patterns that is seeing increasing rainfall and its consequential problems like floods, landslides and illnesses.

Why do we still cling to holding the defining all important examinations in November and December each year when students in several states have to grapple with the very wet weather, the floods and landslides?

Is it virtually impossible to change our schooling calendar so that students can take their exams in September and October? Or even in June and July each year?

Consider the students in Sabah and Sarawak. What about students who have to walk on foot or travel in boats? Even Kelantan is not spared of these changes in weather.  

We talk about transformation. We preach about endless possibilities. But what is so impossible for the education ‘think-tanks’ to think outside the box and revamp the schooling period and its examination dates?

All that we hear are debates and reprimands about whether we should be teaching in English or the national language - year in, year out and all through these three decades.

We are more engrossed in the worn and acrid arguments centered on for and against national schools, religious schools and vernacular schools.

What have parent teacher associations got to say? What has the National Union of the Teaching Profession got to say? What have true-blue educationists got to say?