DAP chairperson Lim Kit Siang today called for the establishment of an independent education panel to examine and evaluate the new grading system adopted by the Malaysian Examination Council (MEC) for its pre-university examinations.

The new system was first used this year to grade the Sijil Tinggi Persekolahan Malaysia (STPM) results to correspond with the cumulative grade point average (CGPA) of the matriculation system for public university admission.

Lim said in a statement that such a panel is urgently needed and suggested that a report prepared by the panel be submitted to the forthcoming Parliament sitting beginning o­n March 10.

"This is to ensure that there will be no repetition of last year's national furore over the unfair and unprofessional selection and admission for the public universities purportedly based o­n meritocracy when the selection based o­n two completely different examination systems was akin to comparing an apple with an orange," he said.

Various quarters, especially parents, had questioned the merit-based system introduced last year and had requested the Education Ministry to be transparent in implementing the system.

Queries by parents

This followed the ministry's announcement last year that 68.9 per cent of those who were offered places in local public universities were bumiputeras under the new merit-based system.

This is a jump from the normal 55 percent practised under the quota system in the past decades and this prompted many to query the criteria for the selection, especially the formula used to match the results of the o­ne-year matriculation programme results with the two-year STPM.

To avoid a similar confusion this year, Lim suggested for a common university entrance examination.

"The o­nly satisfactory solution to a fair, transparent and merit-based public university selection process is to have a common university entrance examination for all public universities in Malaysia.

"The introduction of a common university entrance examination will end the decades-long division undermining national unity and nation-building caused by the annual divisive issue of university admissions," Lim said.

He added that his suggestion was also important to "promote meritocracy" into our public universities and to transform Malaysia into an international centre of academic excellence.

Not due to weakness

Under the new MEC's system, students' performance will be ranked according to 11 grades: A, A-, B+, B, B-, C+, C, C-, D+, D and F compared to the seven that was used previously.

Under the new system, each grade will be equivalent to a certain grade point average - for instance, scoring an A is equivalent to 4.00 point while an A- is 3.67 point.

MEC chief executive Termuzi Abdul Aziz, quoted in dailies today, said the change in grading system was not due to weakness in the existing system but "instead to standardise the grading and enable the council to rank the students' achievement level".

Year 2002 STPM results were released yesterday and set a record in examination history as 624 candidates scored grade A compared to 430 in 2001.