NEVER TOO LATE

... Chong Sing Woh, 60, who is taking the Sijil Pelajaran Malaysia exam, seems slightly bemused by all the attention he is getting as he enters the exam hall at SMK Seri Ampang in Ipoh yesterday.

KUALA LUMPUR: The Sijil Pelajaran Malaysia (SPM) examination for this year started throughout the country yesterday with the Bahasa Melayu 1 and 2 papers. The exam is scheduled to end on Dec 8. A total of 440,682 candidates have registered to sit for the SPM at 3,501 examination centres with 34,146 staff appointed to ensure its smooth running.

Of the total, 379,466 candidates are from government schools, government-aided schools and religious schools funded by the government, while 29,799 are private candidates.

Checks by Bernama at several examination centres found many candidates waiting within their school compounds early in the morning, with some of them taking the opportunity to do their final revision before entering the examination hall.

Parents were also seen accompanying candidates to schools to give them support and words of encouragement before the SPM began at 8am.

To ensure the well-being of students, the Education Ministry will distribute face masks to SPM and Sijil Tinggi Pelajaran Malaysia (STPM) candidates if the Air Pollutant Index (API) registers “unhealthy” air quality again during the examination season.

Deputy Education Minister P. Kalamanathan said this was because the dates of the two major examinations cannot be easily changed as they involved a large number of work force and had been carefully planned for a long time.

“We are not talking about postponing the exams at all unless the API hits 500 and it is an emergency but we don’t expect that to happen,” Kamalanathan said.

He said the ministry would also ensure that candidates in states which were hit by floods could complete the examination in the set period and preparations had already been made to face that situation.

“For instance, if a school is flooded, we will conduct the examinations on higher ground, we will work with the disaster management department which has been set up to ensure that the examination goes on smoothly,” he said. – Bernama