KUALA LUMPUR: National Union of the Teaching Profession has urged teachers to stop looking for “leaked” exam questions and warned that it would not help any member found guilty of the act.
“We have our stand, those found guilty are guilty,” NUTP president Hashim Adnan told reporters at the union’s headquarters here.
He reiterated that only a handful of Year Six teachers of UPSR subjects were involved in the issue.
“The others (Year One to Year Five and secondary school teachers) do not have time to look into matters that are not their own,” he added.
He welcomed the independent committee formed to look into the UPSR paper leaks.
“We are thankful to the Education Ministry for including our secretary-general Lok Yim Pheng as a panel member,” he said.
Lok, who was at the press conference, said: “We will gather feedback on standard operating procedures (SOP) and problems faced by teachers on the ground.”
Hashim said teachers should scrap the culture of assuming that primary school children were fragile and, as such, need to be fed with “spotted questions”.
“If teachers and students stop looking for spotted and leaked questions, we can produce a more independent generation that understands that hard work leads to success,” he added.
However, Lok said discussing past years’ questions with students was acceptable.
Hashim said among the reasons why teachers were willing to provide students with “leaked” questions was to increase the ranking of their schools.
He also said the UPSR needed to be retained, as it was a benchmark to determine pupils’ academic abilities.
“If you do not have this bench-marking, the quality will not be known,” he said. “We cannot use the word quality if we do not know where we stand.”
Parent Action Group for Education (PAGE) Malaysia chairman Datin Noor Azimah Abdul Rahim welcomed NUTP’s stance on not backing the teachers found guilty of leaking the exam papers.
“It is a very good decision and we fully support it,” she said.
The number of arrests in connection with these leaks currently stands at 14. Twelve of the suspects are teachers while the other two are an insurance agent and an engineer.
-thestar
