Malaysian Education System

In Malaysia one begins pre-school/kindergarten between the ages of 3-6. Like the other countries, it's mostly a few hours of structured play time and a little bit of learning as you advance with age. Pre-school education isn't compulsory and there are very few public facilities. Most people send their children to privately owned kindergarten so it can be expensive.

Primary education starts at 7, and goes on for 6 years (Standard 1-6). The Curriculum is standardized and you take the Ujian Penilaian Sekolah Rendah (UPSR; Primary School Evaluation) at the end of it. We learn the usual Science, Math, Malay Language, English as a second language which are tested in the UPSR. Then there are other subjects that there are no standardized tests for. It's automatic advancement through the grades even if you fail, which is a really stupid system.

After Primary School, you advance into Secondary School for 5 years (Form 1-5). For the first 3 years, everybody learns the same things as they did in Primary School, only deeper. There's additional tested subjects like History, Geography and Life Skills. At the end of Form 3, you sit for another standardized test: Penilaian Menengah Rendah (PMR; Lower Certificate of Education). Following this, students are allowed to choose which streams to enter. The options are Science, Arts and Sub Science (mixture of both). The Science stream is straightforward, so you learn Biology, Chemistry, Physics etc. In the Arts, you can choose to actually do art, business, accounts or more vocational subjects. But no matter what stream you are in, you still do certain core subjects similar to the ones in the PMR. Finally at the end of the 5th year, everybody sits for the Sijil Pelajaran Malaysia (SPM; Malaysian Certificate of Education).

Once you're done with the SPM, you can either continue on to Form 6, Matriculation or take a Pre-University Program (Like A Levels). They're all equal to each other and only differ by duration. This is where it gets tricky and unfair. Public Tertiary Institutions in Malaysia work on an affirmative action policy where Malays and indigenous people (Known as Bumiputeras " Original inhabitants of the land) are given almost 90% of the spots. Considering 30% of the Malaysian Population are made of Chinese, Indians and others, most non-Bumiputeras don't end up in the public system after high school. The Public system is heavily subsidized and almost free.

So like me, we go into Private Tertiary Institutions where we pay through our noses for education. They're all pretty new and aren't any older than 50 years. After high school, we join private colleges for our pre-university education where we either do Foundation courses or Australian, Canadian, American and British pre-university courses. Following this, you then enrol yourself into an undergraduate degree programme of choice. Basically one ends up picking your major from the get go, so it doesn't work like the Liberal Arts systems like in America. After the undergraduate degree, one can go on to do Post-grad programmes like Masters of PhD.

Specific to me, I did a Foundation in Arts programme for a year at HELP University followed by me joining the Bachelor of Psychology (Hons) program there. My degree program is 3 years long, after which I graduate with an BA Honours Degree.

The education system in Malaysia is quite frankly very lousy. Like many Asian countries, it's very exam based and people are obsessed with grades. It's not a very holistic education. Most people can get through with merely regurgitating what is in the text books.

That may have been too long. MY BAD. Looking forward to reading more posts!