SBP or MRSM?

 SBPs and MRSMs and how they rank in the SPM examination rankings during my schooling years and it was not a stopper for how good my school is. I have been there and I know it was not all it’s cracked up to be. Believe it or not, during my SPM year, we managed to break a record of major proportions by not getting a 100% SPM examination pass.
Officially, (my SPM examination year) on the SBP list, we are ranked 4th. Overall, if we were to include all schools – private and MRSM – we are ranked 7th.Which is still okay, since we beat TKC and SSP… 

STF’s results are impressive to a certain extent – Maths got 100% all A1, and 134/149 students got A1 for Add Maths. That is, of course, testimony to how good the rote learning system is, I think. I have long been a strong opponent to rote but at the end of the day, it is that which gets results people wanted..

I did gloat a bit since we were a bit higher in the rankings than TKC and SSP; but that’s just sibling rivalry. They gloat at me, on others I gloat at them. It was funny because now we had nothing to do with the achievement – so where really was our right to gloat? But it’s a long-lived rivalry tradition – and it exists in many things – school bands, debate competitions, whatever really, for which there are clear rankings.

As for the MRSM issue in those years –  they have come out tops in the real rankings. It’s just that the PKP MRSMs – for which only students with all A’s at PMR level can enter – are much talked about, they are good schools. But so are other MRSMs who achieve comparable results too and these other MRSMs work with the second or third smartest group of post PMR students. Might be  the cream post-UPSR students were taken by the SBPs?

These other MRSMs are also spotlighted, because they got grade B milk with which they made grade A cheese, where as the PKPs got grade A milk, which, usually, although not always, is easier to mold into grade A cheese.

 It’s easier for SBPs and normal MRSMs to get good grades because they already have the cream post-UPSR examination, easier for MRSM PKPs because they get the cream post-PMR examination, but not such an easy ride for all the day schools, because the maverick few can upset the whole equation.

Let us leave it at that. There are more interesting things out there than SPM results and rankings. Like the story of an Indian student who hung herself for getting 2As instead of 6, and an enraged teenager ramming a car at the courthouse in Perak out of frustration due to his poor results a few years back.. Minority cases but an unhealthy precedent when for some, there is nothing in life but examination.