PETALING JAYA: Amid states being declared red zones, students nationwide returned to school – virtually and physically.
While the majority started their first day in the safety and comfort of home, more than 400,000 students who will be sitting for major exams went back to face-to-face learning.
The atmosphere on the first day of school was subdued as the Form Five and Form Six students from the class of 2020 returned to prepare for their examinations next month.
These students had to follow strict standard operating procedure (SOP) including staying at least one metre away from each other and wearing face masks.
This meant that they could not greet their friends – whom they had not seen for months – with hugs.
In a last-minute decision on Saturday, the education ministry ordered students not sitting vital exams this year to have classes at home.. Read more at straitstimes.com.
PETALING JAYA: Safety must always be the priority but the authorities should also avoid flip-flopping on their decisions regarding the reopening of schools, say parents and teachers.
PETALING JAYA: Parents of Form Five students are confident about letting their children go back to school as long as only exam year students are allowed to do so.
Joy Tan, whose Form Five son studies in a boarding school in Kuala Lumpur, said the environment in his school was more controlled.
“If schools implement tight SOPs, I think it will be good for the kids in exam classes to move on.
“The children are already burning out but we need the cooperation of teachers, parents and students for this to work well, ” she said, adding that discipline was key.
PETALING JAYA: In less than a month, schools will reopen and the much-delayed Sijil Pelajaran Malaysia (SPM) trials will continue.
Parents whose children’s schools have yet to complete the trial exams are anxious over the implications of the delay in sitting for the Form Five trial exams.
In November last year, Education director-general Datuk Dr Habibah Abdul Rahim was quoted as saying that 85% or 2,004 schools had carried out the trial exams while the remaining 346 schools had yet to conduct theirs.
Those schools could not conduct the trial examinations because they were in conditional MCO areas, which included Sabah, Selangor, Kuala Lumpur, Putrajaya and Labuan, she added.