‘Claims of 17,000 failing History baseless’

> Results of SPM 2017 yet to be announced, says Education Ministry

PETALING JAYA: The Education Ministry has rubbished claims that 17,000 Sijil Pelajaran Malaysia (SPM) students failed their History paper last year.

“To date, the Malaysian Examinations Syndicate has not announced any results pertaining to SPM 2017,” it said in a statement yesterday.

More than 61,000 out of 434,535 SPM candidates in 2016 failed the SPM History paper – a 14.2% failure rate.

The ministry urged the public and all relevant quarters not to believe the rumours, claiming that results would be released soon.

The ministry also posted on Facebook and Twitter, saying: “The ministry denies the matter.

“It is not true. Claims that 17,000 candidates for History failed their papers are baseless.”

The post was accompanied by an image of screenshots of postings by social media users making the alleged claim.

The rumour first emerged on Twitter earlier this week, with the news quickly making its rounds on social media.

Many netizens, especially SPM candidates, had commented on the matter the majority hoping that they are not among the 17,000 who supposedly failed the subject.

The 2017 SPM results are expected to be released in the second week of March.

A total of 443,883 candidates sat for SPM nationwide across 3,363 centres between Nov 6 and Dec 4, 2017.

The History subject has been a mustpass paper in SPM since 2013 along with the Bahasa Malaysia subject, meaning students would have to pass both papers to be able to obtain the SPM certificate.