PUTRAJAYA: The Sijil Pelajaran Malaysia (SPM) 2022 candidates have made history by becoming the first batch where more than 90% of them qualify to receive their certificates since History became a compulsory subject to pass in 2013, alongside Bahasa Melayu.
Education director-general Datuk Pkharuddin Ghazali said 91.6% of the candidates are eligible to receive their certificates this year.
“In 2022, the percentage of candidates eligible to receive their SPM certificates has increased to 91.6% compared to 88.1% in 2021,” he said when announcing the results for SPM 2022 yesterday.
He added that this rise can be attributed to the subject average grade for History which saw the biggest increase among all the core subjects, rising 0.23 points from 4.88 to 4.65 in 2022.
On top of that, the national average grade (GPN) for the national exams has improved by 0.12 to 4.74 points compared to last year when it was 4.86, signalling a rise in the GPN since the new SPM format was introduced in 2021. A lower number means a better score.
This is the second cohort to sit for the new SPM format, he added.
Pkharuddin said more students obtained all As in 2022, with a total of 2.7% (10,109 candidates) obtaining all As, compared with 9,696 candidates in SPM 2021.
Additionally, 128,193 candidates (34.3%) obtained at least a pass in all their subjects taken. The percentage of students who passed increased from 34% in 2021.
Pkharuddin also said the gap between urban and rural students continues to narrow, with the gap being 0.43 points compared to 0.46 points fro SPM 2021.
This, he said, could be due to the ministry’s initiatives to conduct home-based teaching and learning (PdPR) where learning and obtaining information online became more common.
Even though Internet accessibility remains a challenge, Pkharuddin said the candidates could still gain access to resources at their schools or Internet centres.
Overall, he said SPM 2022, compared to SPM 2021, showed that 69 subjects recorded an increase in performance, 24 subjects recorded a decrease and two subjects showed unchanged or stable performance.
As Malaysia moves through the Covid-19 transition to the endemic phase, Pkharuddin said the management and conduct of public examinations, especially SPM in 2022, has returned to the existing standard operating procedure adopted before the pandemic.
“Nevertheless, the Education Ministry still ensured that the management and conduct of the SPM examination in 2022 gave priority to the safety and welfare of candidates as well as invigilators,” he said.
He added efforts were carried out to ensure that the examination management runs smoothly and that there is no spread of the Covid-19 virus at the examination centres.
He also said that 373,974 candidates sat for the national exams in 3,355 examination centres nationwide from January to March.
Pkharuddin said that the improvement in results for the national examination showed that the efforts by the ministry, the state education departments, district education offices and schools are on the right track.
