More Primary School Achievement Test (UPSR) examinations have been cancelled today following revelations that its mathematics and Tamil language papers have been leaked.

This brings the total number of UPSR papers that are confirmed to have been leaked to 10.

 

As a result, the Ministry of Education announced that the Mathemaics and Tamil Language examinations on Sept 10 have been nullified, and students would have to re-sit them on Oct 9.

 

“This takes into consideration of Aidil Adha holidays and logistics of printing and distribution.

 

“In addition, the Ministry of Education stresses that this examination will be re-done to ensure that the public examination is conducted in accordance to standard operating procedures, apart from ensuring the integrity and credibility of the UPSR examinations,” said director-general of education Abd Ghafar Mahmud in a statement today.

 

The affected papers are Mathematics for national schools (subject code 015/1), for Chinese schools (025/1), and for Tamil schools (035/1); as well as the Tamil language (036 and 037) papers.

Police report lodged

Yesterday, Bernama reported that a Malaysian Examination Syndicate (MES) officer had lodged a police report claiming that the said papers had been leaked.

 

This followed earlier reports that the English papers (014/1 and 014/2) and Science papers (018, 028 and 038) had been leaked. They have been re-scheduled for Sept 30.

 

“I truly understand the feelings, anxiety and difficulties that everyone is facing. As director-general of education, I apologise to students, teachers, parents and all those involved in the latest incident.

 

“I have instructed all headmasters and teachers to give counselling services to students who need it,” said Abd Ghafar.

 

Promising that there would be no repeat of the incident, he said as an immediate measure, MES officers are being replaced, while security measures in the handling of exam papers are being tightened.

Thus far, 30 people have been questioned and 14 have been detained to facilitate police investigations into the leaked papers.

An eight-member independent panel headed by former Chief Justice Zaki Azmi had been set up to review the SOPs for public examinations.