Examinations have been an integral part of the education system in most Asian countries. However, questions on how children are negatively affected by a never-ending series of examinations are now being raised.

This was among the issues keenly discussed at a two-day national conference on human rights education organised by the Human Rights Commission of Malaysia (Suhakam) which ended today.

Singapore-based human rights group Think Centre president Sinapan Samydorai said there should be no examinations in kindergartens and elementary schools.

He said in his country where the education system was very much exam-oriented, parents were beginning to complain that this was too stressful for their children.

"The children's social and emotional development are somehow neglected, so much so that they do not know how to relate with the opposite sex when they grow up.

"The children are not happy, [they are] loaded with homework and tuition classes, and the teachers are task-oriented, pushing them to score high," he explained.

'Examination factory'

Asking whether schools have become an 'examination factory', he said an exam-oriented education system has created suicidal tendencies among children such as in Japan, China and South Korea.

"At secondary schools, students should study subject modules of various degrees of knowledge according to their pace and sit for the exam when ready," he said when presenting a paper entitled "Is an exam-oriented system a violation of children's rights to education" at the Suhakam conference.

"No examination can gauge the total development of a child, such as in pre-school. So, parents and teachers need to listen to them and assess their performance."

Sinapan, who is a former teacher, argued that an exam-oriented education system is further marginalising students from poor or less privileged families who have no access to extra learning material in school or at home.

"We can see that such a system tends to only emphasise top scorers at the expense of the low-achievers, who are forgotten and sidelined by society, and later may turn to criminal activities."

Former Education Department director-general Dr Abdul Shukor Abdullah, however, strongly believed that school exams are a "necessary evil" for children to get used to the pressures of professional examination demands, such as entering the legal or medical fields.

"Exams are necessary to gauge the academic performance of students, but whether it infringes on children's rights to education very much depends on the purpose of conducting it."

He also said that the direction of our education policy is often dictated by public pressure, which puts it beyond the control of educators or school administrators.

Sacrificial lamb

Abdul Shukor said another push factor was the high requirement for university admission which affects the education system both directly and indirectly because schools are forced to impose a higher standard on students.

"It is not that we as educators want to torture students. I'm a parent and I know that parents suffer when [their children] sit for their exams.

"It must be accepted that schools are forced to cater for such demands and pressures from the public, especially when entry requirements in Universiti Malaya, for example, are based purely on academic achievements," he added.

However, Abdul Shukor conceded that psychological development of students is sacrificed in an exam-oriented system, particularly when parents send their children for tuition classes in aspirations of them becoming the 'best' student.

Earlier, Sinapan raised the irony of student groups or representatives not being represented at the today's plenary session since they were the subject of the discussions.

"Why aren't the student organisations invited to speak? They would have addressed this issue differently."

In reply, conference organising chairperson Prof Dr Chiam Heng Keng, who is also Suhakam commissioner, explained that students' groups were not invited because, apart from being an oversight, it was more of an administrative problem due to the time constraint.

During the question-and-answer session, a teacher asked the conference organisers why the views of teachers, who play a vital role, were not sought for a conference which was centred on education.

She pleaded for exams to constitute only 50 percent of the school syllabus so that the rest can be focused on the students' non-academic development such as organising of events and enhancing their social skills.