Are Diagnostic Examination Questions Being Leaked Out At Tuition Centres?

If you have a child in secondary school, chances are that you would have heard of diagnostic examinations. These are mock examinations, held several times a year, to prepare students sitting for public examinations such as PMR and SPM and STPM.

The setter of the examination questions are the respective education departments of each state.

Recently, it came to the attention of this blogger, that some school teachers in the Wangsa Maju area were quite peeved because a number of their students who were usually average in their scores in school exams did extremely well in a diagnostic paper of a certain subject.

Upon discreet checks, it was found out that even before the examinations, some students who were studying at a particular tuition centre nearby had already been given the questions as "forecast" questions. All the questions forecasted by a this centre had miraculously come up, word for word, in a recent diagnostic examination. While it is little wonder that the tuition centre was extremely popular, what begs discussion is how did the questions come up even before the examination was held?

This blogger, after talking to some teachers and parents who were teachers, came up with two conclusions:

a) The diagnotic examinations were not held on the same day. Students who had set for the exams in their schools earlier would be asked by their tuition teachers to bring the questions to school and the teachers would share these questions with those who had yet to sit for the examination, hence the tremendously accurate 'spot questions'.

b) Theory No 2, which was given by someone this blogger talked to, is that some teachers who are moonlighting at tuition centres who happened to be in charge of the diagnostic tests, had leaked out the questions. Hence the miraculously accurate 'spot questions'. Some smart ones would reword the questions to so that the similarity would be less striking. Others take lock, stock and barrel, hence the 100 per cent accuracy in the tuition teachers' 'prediction'.

This blog entry was written after much thought for the welfare of students in a time when academic qualifications had become so important that people are willing to cheat for it.

For the tuition teachers who had cheated, you should be ashamed of yourselves for your selfishness to look good at the tuition centre which employs you. By teaching your students to cheat (whether they know or not they are cheating is immaterial here) by providing them with these spot questions will bring hardship to them in future. What happens when they leave the tuition centre and get to college or varsity?

This entry was created, without malice, to bring awareness to teachers in the Wangsa Maju area, in the hope that reading this, they would be prompted to conduct their own checks and verify the suspicions in future diagnostic tests. Be suspicious if you find students who do averagely well suddenly getting strings of As. There is a trend and if you are alert, you can spot it! )Parents too should do the same if they could.)

Do not let the selfish few who moonlight at tuition centres undermine your effort to bring out the excellence in your students. Bring these black sheep to book in ways you are most comfortable with. You owe it to hardworking students to do so!

Although diagnostic examinations are not really important, trust had been betrayed if the questions had indeed landed in the hand of tuition centres before students sit for their examinations. It makes fools of hardworking teachers and the integrity of the teaching profession at large?

For parents whose children studied at these cheating tuition centres, make your own discreet investigations and see if the allegations were true. And if they were, kindly do the appropriate that your conscience will allow you.

It is tempting to have your children become top-scorers. Who doesn't want this bragging right? But at what price? And where will the cheating end?

This blogger also spoke to a teacher who taught at a school outside Wangsa Maju and was told that this 'leakage phenomenon' was nothing new.

"Usually the questions arrive days earlier. They would be given to the respective teachers to prepare for the examinations."

"The unscrupulous teachers who happen to moonlight at the tuition centres would give these diagnostic questions to their tuition students BEFORE the actual examination."

This blogger thinks that diagnostic questions should only be given to the principal of each school and kept in a safe, under lock and keys, until just before the actual examination to prevent leaks if a school is serious about educational excellence.

Another alternative is to bar teachers from taking up part time work at tuition centres - whether or not there is a price hike.