Madrasah students on uneven playing field

WE REFER to recent media coverage of the Primary School Leaving Examination (PSLE) results and the assessment of madrasah students' performance compared to their peers in national schools. The issue of madrasah education has received a lot of attention, but rarely are views of madrasah students or alumni heard in the national media.

One of us is a madrasah alumnus and while we applaud the recent accomplishments of madrasah students, many challenges involving public policy and madrasah education remain.

First, there is the issue of benchmarking. The Government should not use the scores of Malay/Muslim students in the worst performing schools as a standard for madrasah performance. This is not just a low target that may ironically add to underperformance, but is also not useful as a measure of the madrasah's effectiveness.

Instead, a measure of value-add should be used. For example, PSLE scores predicted from a Primary 4 common exam administered to calibrate national and madrasah students' performances could be obtained. A better benchmark would be value-added scores above predictions at a certain percentile of the national schools distribution.

Absolute performance comparisons do not make much policy sense, given that madrasahs are still under-resourced and disadvantaged compared to even the worst national schools. Madrasahs should instead be evaluated based on how much improvement they produce.

Second, the Government classifies madrasah students as 'private candidates' in national exams. As a result, they have to take stressful national exams in completely unfamiliar schools and settings other than their own madrasah.

National exams are really performance tests and psychological research shows that such acute situational factors can impair performance. For this reason, train madrasahs to invigilate national exams for all students at all levels (except perhaps exams that require a good laboratory facility).

Third, while madrasah students are judged by their national exam performance, are madrasah teachers subject to assessment? It would not be surprising if students underperform when the root problem is really unqualified teachers.

Finally, it is also important to note that madrasah cohorts (over 300) are minuscule compared to national cohorts (almost 50,000). Statistical theorem alone predicts that such a small sample would result in madrasahs producing a larger dispersion of scores with many at the bottom tail. Public policy based on statistics needs to be cognisant of this fact.

Given the uneven playing field and different educational philosophies and aims, a madrasah- government partnership to ensure more reasonable but not necessarily watered-down standards needs to be taken. Such a partnership should also implement positive changes to bring out the best potential of madrasah students without losing sight of why madrasahs were initially set up, and still fulfil compulsory education requirements.

Siti Zubaidah Mirza (Ms)
Farhan Ali