SPM 2011

14th November 2011 will see another batch of my Form 5 students sitting for their life-changing examination; that is the Sijil Pelajaran Malaysia.  I say life-changing because being such an important examination, it touches and affects each every individual within its vicinity, whether directly or indirectly.

The first group of people who will have their life altered by this examination is without doubt the students sitting for the exams themselves.  Everything that they have studied (or not!) for the last two years, will be manifested here.  It can even be considered an accumulation of all the knowledge these students have gathered in the whole eleven years or so of school life.  It is this examination that will prove that they have gathered that knowledge to its full potential or otherwise.  And it is this examination that will be the stepping stone to what important things these students will do in the future.  Will they pursue tertiary education?  Will they join the rat race?  Will they dwell on the past thinking that they could (and should) have done better?  All will be revealed when the examination results come out next year.

Another group of people who will be affected by these students performance is the teachers who have taught these students for the past two years.  The students' performance will determine the workload that will ensue the following year when the results come out.  It will determine the level of praises (and criticisms!) that they will get from the people who sit in their comfy chairs and air-conditioned offices.  And it will determine whether the teachers themselves can sit back in self-contentment or pick up where they left off and start aiming for the stars (or in this case, STAR!) all over again!

And finally, not forgetting the all important group of all and that is the parents.  Like me, who has a child who will be sitting for the examination tomorrow, hopes are high and prayers abound for the offspring's success; quiet in personal meditation that the child will be calm during the examination; her thoughts clear and her memory laden with all the knowledge she has accumulated, at the ready to be dispensed with according to the questions in the examinations.  Rest assured that as a father (who has his masculine ego to look after!), his prayers for his daughter's success (and all his children in fact!) even though more subtle and less conspicuous, are indubitably non-stop and always straight from the heart.