KUALA LUMPUR: The National Union of the Teaching Profession (NUTP) has shot down Sarawak DAP's call to cancel the 2020 Sijil Pelajaran Malaysia (SPM) examination scheduled to be held in February this year due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
Its secretary-general Harry Tan said any decision to defer SPM must not be done in haste, stressing that the examination was the deciding factor to chart a student's future career.
"NUTP regards SPM, which is a public and summative examination, to be the utmost importance. SPM is the last examination to be sat by those in secondary schools before they enter Form Six or enrol into technical education.
"We must maintain the SPM standard so that our education system is truly at par with the world's and will not be questioned.
"NUTP is also confident that the Education Ministry is capable of conducting the SPM examination based on existing expertise," he said in a statement.
Tan said this in reference to Sarawak DAP chairman Chong Chieng Jen's statement on Monday urging the Education Ministry to call off last year's SPM slated to be held in the first quarter of this year.
Chong had said the SPM certificate for 2020 should instead be issued to the students based on their past school examinations, course work and mock examination results assessed by their respective teachers.
He had said, with the daily four-digit increase in infections of late, it would not be safe for SPM candidates to sit for the examination.
Chong had expressed his concern over the students' wellbeing and stress level to have their examination postponed to the first quarter of this year, adding that he had faxed a letter of appeal to Education Minister Mohd Radzi Md Jidin, urging him to do away with the SPM examination and adopt the school assessment system as the basis of the SPM certificate.
