Unhappy UPSR candidates can appeal for paper review - director

Its director, Datin Nawal Salleh said the period for appeal to re-mark papers would be opened for one month from yesterday.

She said so far the board had received 20 applications and the number was expected to increase further.

"The application can be made via the school and the appeal form can be downloaded from the Examination Board website (lp.moe.gov.my) with a payment of RM50 for the recheck of each subject," she told a media conference on 2016 UPSR results here today.

The media conference was held to clarify the UPSR results released yesterday after parents and candidates expressed their unhappiness with the new format of examination.

The candidates were the first cohort to sit for the examination under the new format in line with the implementation of the Primary School Standard Curriculum (KSSR) which stressed on elements of Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTs).

She said HOTs is the aspiration of the Malaysian Education Blueprint to produce quality human capital with better thinking skills.

"As such, the Examination Board made the decision to include elements of thinking skills in the examination questions (since 2011) which is not only focus on UPSR but in the Sijil Pelajaran Malaysia examination as well.

According to Nawal, the UPSR format which was based on KSSR was almost unchanged for 10 years and the board could not introduce elements of HOTs then.

"So a change to the format of 2016 UPSR, which has been talked about since last year, gave the board the opportunity to feature questions with elements of HOTs," she said, adding that UPSR became a polemic as the community only looked at the number of 'As' obtained by their children.

At the same time, she also advised parents not to be disappointed and punish their children for not obtaining straight As in the UPSR as the examination was more than scoring distinctions.

She said parents should look at the excellence of their children from all aspects and not just in taking examination.

Asked about the worries of parents for their children who would not be able join residential schools as they did not have straight As: "I believe this should not be a problem as such schools have comprehensive selection criteria.