New students get insights into SPN21

FOLLOWING the official launch of the new National Education System (SPN21) on Monday, January 5, the new batch of Year Seven students at Sayyidina Husain Secondary School will not be required to sit for their mid-year examination.

Deputy Principal (Academic), Kamariah Hj Maidin disclosed this during the Year Seven student registration at the school yesterday.

Instead, Year Seven will only have their final examination at the end of the fourth term, said the deputy principal.

"In turn, their overall marks for that year will not be dependent wholly on the final examination but will include marks from their homework, classwork, tests and projects."

"The proportion of the mark allocation will vary from subject to subject," added Kamariah, explaining that different subjects will have its own mark allocation for its final examination and coursework.

Under SPN21, students will learn new elective subjects aside from their core subjects like Computer, French and Arabic language to name a few, which will be allocated to various classes according to their academic performance.

"For instance, the top class Johan will have an option to study French, Commerce and Computer while the "Efficient" class have the opportunity to learn Arabic language instead of French," explained the deputy principal.

At the secondary school, Year Seven classes are named according to the acronym JERUDONG whereby the letter J is named for the top performance class and letter O is named for the class with the least performance.

According to the deputy principal, the Year Seven students will not sit for the usual Penilaian Menengah Bawah (PMB) examination but the Student Progress Examination (PSE) instead. Under PSE, they have to at least attain a 60 per cent pass for all subjects before pursuing the General Secondary Education Programme (Program Pendidikan Menegah General) either from Year Nine to Year Ten or from Year Nine to Year Eleven.

"For those students who excel in their PSE, they have the option to complete the General Secondary Education Programme in two years but normally it would last for three years," explained Kamariah.

To further explain the new national education system, another briefing will be conducted for both parents and students sometime this month, informed the deputy principal.

Some 260 students who previously studied at various schools such as the Sengkurong Primary School and Katimahar Primary School came for the registration yesterday. They were also briefed on student welfare, counselling and discipline before being ushered to their respective classrooms.

The Brunei Times