Suara Hati Ayahku

Salam.

What is the purpose of a marking scheme?

Yes u r right. it guides you in marking the exam papers. In this case - it is general mathematics.

while at the same time it helps you (young teachers) to know a bit about which part of the syllabus, question, item in maths is more important than the rest. In SPM you will get M1 and C2 scheme (if i did not forget ). M1 is mandatory marks and C2 is carry-on 2 marks after you got M1 mark.

By doing so you can see that there are two parts in the marking scheme. Which part is the most mandatory and which is not (optional). By being aware we can become better teacher(s).

2) But in my life as a maths educator I found that there are few cases where .. scheme is not 100% followed by everybody. This is the time when we got few scripts which get border cases like 37, 38 marks out of 100. Should we pass the candidate? Assume that 40 marks is the passing point in a scale of 100.

Sometimes the marking leader would direct us to double check the so called scripts. If we do that then there are times we are prone to be a bit lenient .. or in simple word we went soft ..'don't care lah .. just give lah (the marks, I mean)..' .

So at the end we find that weak students suddenly made the grades and pursued their studies in college community and/or polytechnics MOHE.

Once they are absorbed into these institutions we can find few students find their life not that easy any more especially if they get foreign trained lecturers in their engineering maths classes. Here the lecturers are very strict and soon ... those that passed .. in SPM with 8E .. will fail. So what! It means that at times we created extra burden to poly lecturers in doing remedial work. In fact we should let the lecturers do research and improvise their teaching and questioning techniques more and more. Or we encourage in door training in teaching maths on the computers. At least there is something new for us to explore. How to use computers to teach better, sharper and more professional? If we do not do that .. we are just repeating what 100 year old teachers did once upon a time. Thats why we never improve as teachers.

That's it .. for today. My sharing of experience among us new and veteran teachers. Happy teaching.

Wallahu aklam.