Students, parents and tuition centres brace for the national exam season filled with anxiety, late-night study sessions and relentless aunties.
IT is that time of year again. The air smells faintly of desperation, instant noodles and highlighter ink. Colour-coded study timetables have been laminated, posted on bedroom walls and ceremonially ignored since day one.
WhatsApp groups are flooded with soalan ramalan from someone called Prof Confirm Keluar at 2am. And somewhere across this great nation of ours, a Malaysian mother is stress-buying her fourth packet of kopi while quietly revising Add Maths she has not touched since 1987 – nobody asked her to, she just cannot stop herself.
SPM trial season, darlings. Welcome back to Malaysia’s most spectacular annual family destruction programme – free entry, no refunds and no survivors – all happening between July and August.
The students: Masters of the art of looking busy
Let us talk about the hundreds of thousands of candidates currently sleepwalking into this national trauma.
Hundreds of thousands of students who cannot remember to flush the toilet after themselves somehow need to memorise the entire periodic table, 20 chapters of Sejarah and produce a karangan about Nilai Murni they are quite clearly still working on in real life.
The study schedule? Immaculate – colour-coded by subject, by day, by hour, cross-referenced with moon phases. A genuine masterpiece of organisational ambition.
The execution? They have been on TikTok since Tuesday. The highlighters have received more exercise than the brain. The “study aesthetic” photos, however, are absolutely thriving on Instagram. Five-star content. Zero actual studying. Makcik weeps.
The parents: Unpaid tutors with boundary issues
Emak has not slept properly since March. She currently knows more about photosynthesis than the actual Form 5 Biology teacher.
She is subscribed to seven tuition WhatsApp groups, forwarded a leaked trial paper from a complete stranger at 2am and felt absolutely zero shame about it – none, zilch – and would probably do it again tonight.
She is running on anxiety, kopi pekat and a deep personal belief that if she worries hard enough, her child will score straight As.
Ayah’s contribution arrives punctually every evening in the form of one question: “Dah study ke belum?”, delivered with absolute sincerity before he returns to the sofa. It is not much but it is consistent. And in this house, consistent counts for something.
The tuition industry: The real ‘straight-A students’
Now here is where things get genuinely impressive. The ones truly scoring this season are not the students; it is Encik Hafiz and his tuition centre empire, operating out of a shoplot, arriving at parent meetings in a brand-new Alphard and charging RM200 per subject, per month, per child.
Multiply that by, say, eight subjects, then multiply that by two children. Emak is essentially paying a second mortgage so her son can learn Add Maths from a whiteboard every Tuesday and Thursday. And yet. AND YET. If the child scores an A, the credit goes to Encik Hafiz. If the child scores a C, the blame somehow falls entirely on the child for not concentrating. The child, mind you – not the RM200-per-subject-per-month teacher.
Makcik sees you, Encik Hafiz. She sees you very clearly. This Makcik also knows she is clearly in the wrong line of work – one that does not come with an Alphard.
The trial paper: A personal attack in A4 format
Three hours. Questions carefully designed by teachers who clearly harbour deep personal grudges against 17-year-olds. Makcik does not make the rules; she simply observes them.
Essay questions so magnificently vague that you could write about keluarga bahagia or the impact of climate change and, somehow, technically both answers are correct.
The marking scheme, meanwhile, is interpreted differently in every state, every school and, quite possibly, every parallel universe.
And then there is the classic: the chapter every student collectively agreed to sacrifice. The unspoken national understanding that this particular topic – dusty, neglected, abandoned since the first week of January – would simply not appear. It appeared. Section B. Twenty marks. Smiling. That is not an exam question; that is a breach of trust.
The aunties: Intelligence operatives in baju kurung
“Eh anak you dapat berapa dalam trial?” Do not be fooled. This is not a casual inquiry from a caring relative; this is active data collection. This is surveillance, this is the aunties doing what the aunties do best.
This information is being carefully filed away, cross-referenced against her own children’s results and will be deployed at maximum velocity at the next kenduri, raya gathering or any unsuspecting family WhatsApp group. Possibly all three simultaneously.
Your child got 9As? Her child got 10As. Your child is doing Science stream? Her child is doing Science stream AND taking extra Mandarin classes AND learning violin.
You have not merely failed your child; you have failed your entire bloodline going back three generations. Nobody is safe – not you, not your child, not your child’s future unborn grandchildren. The aunties are eternal. They were here before us and will outlast us all.
So, to every Form 5 student staring at their Add Maths paper at midnight, to every Emak who hasn’t slept properly since March and every Ayah holding the household together in his own quiet way: Makcik sees you. Makcik has been you. And Makcik is rooting for all of you.
Except the aunties. The aunties can sort themselves out.
Azura Abas is the executive editor of theSun. Comments: letters@thesundaily.com
The Sun Malaysia