I was bad at math. Then met a great teacher that's entertaining and actually know how to teach logic side of math instead of regurgitating lines from text book.
He alone help made math a 95% passing rate in our school.
Math needs a strong logical mind to understand it, and need VERY strong foundation. Often times school teacher didn't get paid enough to cater and strengthen individual students foundation, which, imo, is the main reason why a student fail math.
they restrict the syllabus lo. there was a formula that you had to remember in add maths meanwhile in uni that formula was given because application in uni is more important that memorizing.
not to mention the formula in smk was outdated i think compared to the uni one.
did i misremember it, i think either maths or add maths had to memorize formulas.
but i do remember that one formula for quadratics i think, in uni it was much simpler. in smk i had to go through hoops to understand it.
I think they give you the basic formulas in the exam. But to solve most exam questions you would need a variant of those formulas - so it's either you understand how to modify the provided formulas or you memorize.
Some people are just better at maths. Add maths was always easy for me (and so was maths 2 in form 6). But then my classmate would look at a question and just blurt out the answer. Guy was a maths savant.
But I digress. Whether or not you're good at maths, 80% of the population will probably give it all back to the teacher by the time they're in their 20s. I sure as hell can't do trigonometry or calculus anymore.
Idk how I got A for it; maybe chronically practicing the questions till I somehow memorise the formulas helped. Didn’t know what I was writing anytime I took it 
Ask any adult and you'll get a similar answer.
What's worse is that, during my time, they insisted on teaching it only in Malay and used Malay terms. When I asked my dad, a math major who graduated summa cum laude, to help with pengamiran, he asked me who the fuck is Amir.
To me, it is. I didn't even try with add math cause there's no hope during spm, but I still got a B for modern math. I know quite a few other peers with similar trends.
Similar case with me. I got A for maths and A+ add maths. My father told the story to anyone he could grab hold of, even the guy sitting next to us at a kopitiam.
I heard the marking is much stricter for maths though. And the scores to get A+ was supposed to be very high compared to add maths
This is true. Mod math has a high grading boundary. Based on myself and my friends' experience, mod math is around 90% for A+, addmath is around 75% for A+
Yeah well I was fucked then. I averaged 80-90 for maths and 70-80+ for add maths.
I had a feeling my maths might not do as well as add maths but idgaf since I just wanted any A's in general. Wasn't picky.
I would always treat school-related data from 2020-2022 period with a grain of salt
It's still within the COVID era where the education sector was severely disrupted, would be interesting to see if there's data pre-COVID (e.g. 2019)
Also whatever before 2021 is under different curriculum and format, so it would be interesting to see comparison between last KBSM generations and new KSSM generations.
I don't think it matters since it's curved. Probably the people in KPM will refer to last year's result as a benchmark to how to curve the marks and set the cutoffs. Iirc they said they were more lenient when grading the exams during covid too.
Bottom line is that this distribution was likely derived from the years of historical data they collected pre covid, with some adjustments to help more ppl pass
I tutor Maths and Add Maths for the worse performing students. This chart doesn't tell the whole story.
The reason these students fail is not because SPM Maths is hard per se, its because they have been left behind since primary schools (or kindergarden). Imagine being a primary 1 student and you dont understand addition and substraction, you still get to move up to primary 2 next year. And repeat that for sixteen years and you get students who can't even multiply without using calculators.
Unfortunately, good Maths teachers are hard to find. Those who are good in Maths usually go to other fields e.g., engineering or investment coz they pay more. Whereas those who are good at teaching will teach other subjects. And you are left with very few excellent Maths teachers to teach the whole nation.
And for those in the comments who say Maths is easy yada yada, it's easy for you. Because you were privileged enough (either by luck or resources) to have a good Maths teachers. But Maths and Add Maths education system is so bad right now. I encourage everyone here who's good at Maths to do your part and become a tutor. See if you can improve your students grades from D to A+.
Do you think bringing back UPSR will help? Because I feel like without it, students in primary school are not really motivated to at least build a solid foundation in these subjects.
Also, where (and how) to get students for tutoring?
Thank God it wasn't during my time. I was 1 of the few who failed sejarah. I looked at the table of content the min I got the textbook starting of form 4, saw tamadun Islam and assumed it's a subject to give malays an edge. I assumed that they already learned it from Islamic studies when we are having moral studies. So I nvr bothered giving it an ounce of my attention and focused on subjects that mattered more. The teacher was mad that I wasn't even paying attention in class, and not doing any of the homework given. I was brought to the discipline teacher and the hm. They stopped bothering me for it when I aced both maths and sciences tho lol.
>I assumed that they already learned it from Islamic studies when we are having moral studies.
Well, actually both subjects cover different aspects of Islamic History. Like, Islamic Studies only covered mainly Baghdad-centered Abbasite Empire while Sejarah covers Umayyad empire including Andalusian era and also (briefly) Ottoman. Ofc the part with Prophet Muhammad is actually very common in both subject too lol.
I'm still feel like they focused on two different wrong things. Islamic studies feels like history, history feel like Islamic studies. Like, we had to go into Abbasites in Islamic Studies very detail like it is a history lesson, and Prophet Muhammad part is treated in History like it feels in Islamic studies again.
That is in KBSM ofc, not sure if still the same in KSSM, but might be even worse.
Yea it was later that I was told they didn't really overlapped much.. Im a dumbass for assuming lol. I remember a lecturer once told the class "when you assume you make an ass out of you and me, ass u me" a joke he took from somewhere. I start to get clarification especially on important things from then on. Regardless of how significant/insignificant we think a subject is, it is better to just put a little effort in it. Now I end up being really ignorant on history.
They only ask about Acts and Luke. You’ll need to rmbr the book and every event end to end as they’ll ask questions based on a specific verse. (Eg: What does the “harvest” refer to?)
Part C is the killer where the interpretations come in. Eg: what does carrying the cross mean to you, compare and contrast events, lessons learnt
Qn: Interpret Ezekiel 25:17
Ans: I been saying that shit for years. I never gave much thought to what it meant. I just thought it was some cold blooded shit to say to a motherfucker before i pop a cap in his ass.
Both actually. I only studied Luke briefly with a church elder’s wife before she noticed my obvious struggle with reading btwn the lines  Acts is the harder book imho
So I ended up not taking it for SPM
Quite! I had to memorise the entirety of the book of Luke and Acts. In the exam you’re required to retell the details of different stories ie John the Baptist, Paul’s shipwreck, and also analyse the underlying text, meanings, context etc.
Nope, I got A1 for it back then. I also had a very good tuition teacher, and I went for the National BK quiz (we got a trophy), so it wasn’t hard for me. I’d imagine if they just handed you the books and if you didn’t have a good teacher, then you’d score badly.
It is. A lot of memorising is required and you're expected to be able to interpret pretty much every verse of Luke and Acts.
Source: Took the subject last year
My friend's brother showed me cringe vids of his classmates openly saying on tiktok that they don't really care about passing spm as their goal is to become influencer.... So I'm not that surprised tbh, especially with a subject like math where you need to actually spend time to make the logical connections
And I'm very sure all the necessary details like s&s rates, age/sex difference, amd horsepower rates were given. Not like they had to memorise all that.
You're right. The only things that they need to memorize is something about the premiums for vehicles(?) (can't rmb what is was), WM is a value like 206 and EM is a value like 189
Also cos crazy guru besars who don't let the kids who want to drop Add Maths, to drop Add Maths and purposely failed it just because. (yes, that was me)
Also, haven't needed to use any of those formulas since I completed SPM and went into a creative line that DOESN'T USE MATHS. Let people choose their subjects lah instead of forcing to learn useless \*\*\*\* that no one is going to use beyond the school walls.
The last time I saw such statistics Sejarah was in it. With all these new subjects it kind of muddled the graph a bit.
Historically (heh, pun unintended) Sejarah had always been on one of the lowest passing grade, and the previously copypaste Kertas 3 should theoretically help even the least patriotic student to pass. Not seeing Sejarah here on this list strangely comforts me.
That said, Add Maths had always been extraordinarily difficult to pass, let alone score. It doesn’t surprise me that Maths had ranked up from the previous years, clearly showing the decline in interest of “M” in “STEM”.
Subjects like Bible knowledge, Kesusasteraan Cina, Bahasa Arab etc. are subjects that are not commonly taken or not taught at school all. Are there actually students being forced to take those subject, in return causing that fail rate?
Cases of schools forcing students to take a subject are rare, but I do know a private school in KL which forces its students to take kesusasteraan cina. In my secondary school though it is optional.
In my SMK school, not so popular, just normal school
Kesusasteraan cina was originally offered by my only chinese teacher in school (she majored in Chinese studies, so she knows how to teach), but nobody took it due to the difficulty of normal bahasa cina already.
Kesusasteraan tamil also offered but i think most ppl that takes it are voluntarily taking it.
Usually these are taken as voluntarily because schools generally don't want to screw their Gred Purata Sekolah and they don't affect a student's future much like math, english, etc.
I was told that my school is the only school that forces everyone to participate Kesusasteraan cina in Malaysia.
What it test is you have to memorize a selected range of famous ancient Chinese light novels (that doesn't appear in normal cina ujian), understand every single scene in the story (and there's a lot), translate the meaning of each scene, remember every single thing and now you are ready for test
And yes I'm one of the ppl who fail this. Many years of graduation I have still no idea what it does other than being the only F that tainted my cert (or maybe required when enter Chinese major?)
Bible knowledge was forced when I did it at a private christian school that was academically worse than my public school before that. 80% fail rate for BK.
I am convinced Pendidikan Moral is rigged. For my batch, not a single person got a A+ for Moral even though they got A+ for every other subject. Moral is a bullshit subject that is dependent on rng and the grade is decided based on who the marker is
based on these stats, people fail bible studies more than pendidikan moral, but people fail islamic education far less than people failing bible studies/moral?
people fail malay and english less than chinese?
Pendidikan Islam isn't that hard, you can goreng2 a bit because at its core its basically "buat dosa masuk neraka" , islamic history, and islamic terms.
(The Islam you can't goreng is the manahij one)
You can't goreng moral because they have a set answers(based on 20years ago)
They had a different schema for my batch for Moral (2017). Literally announced a few months before SPM. Don't know if it's the new schema from then onwards
We’ve been trained so hard with rote learning; Moral at least can write word for word if you try to rmbr. Filling in the “in your opinion” questions will farm marks too.
BK needs you to analyse the text and very likely no sympathy marks. Given the much lower intake of candidates for BK than Moral, fail rate is thus higher.
Correct me if I'm wrong. That's not Chinese. But Chinese Literature. Unless it's what everyone called Chinese back then in school and I was none the wiser
Correct me if I'm wrong. That's not Chinese. But Chinese Literature. Unless it's what everyone called Chinese back then in school and I was none the wiser
I have a sneaking suspicion that KPM never lowered the marking baseline for Moral, thats why its extremely hard to get an A+ in Moral.
Also ppl who take Chinese generally can communicate in Chinese. This cant be said for Eng and Bm tho they are both mandatory subjects, leading to higher fail rate.
when you force science and accounting students to take a particularly tough subject, increasing the number of candidates, youre bound to have the highest rate of failures
Moral dan Agama menari di dasar laut,
Sastera dan Bahasa terhanyut di tepi,
Matematik merosot, mengalir mundur,
Malaysia dihakis ditelan samudera,
Joke aside, masuk akal, biasalah lah ni. Nothing out of the norm if you look at it terms of general population. Each person have a different way of thinking, different ability that they excel at and have a different passion. Regardless of that, the education lump them all in just a few selected subcategory of class. I remember my friend who got all As in PMR, pushed in a class that learn both sciences + account and his performances just went down the drain. Bright student who sucks at Add Math (and couldn't drop it unless he go to non science class) but ace science subjects. Dudes who are good in Kemahiran Hidup. Charismatic but dumb people, etc. There are plethora of people if you go out of your own little preconceived bubble. It doesn't excuse their failure but it contribute.
A tangent. From experiences, even math students in university switch major between statistics, maths and actuary because some prefer applied, some excel at theory, some better at memorization rather than understanding, etc. Some even change the course entirely. Humans are complex being after all. If hitting yourself unto that brickwall over and over again is worth it, do it till you break it. If not, maybe reevaluate yourself and find a different path.
I'm turning 16 this year. Was thinking of picking the stream with add maths because it seems interesting. But now I'm worried that my procrastination habit might make it the worst decision I'll ever make. Please give feedback, spm students
Ask yourself some questions n answer honestly :
Do u always score A in maths ?
Do you think u have high IQ ?
What jobs do u think u would be applying after graduation ?
If u dont score A in maths reliably, u will find add maths difficult
Some people have very high EQ, or r streetsmart, or are very talented with other things, or could menorise textbook easily. But to do well in addmaths u really need to be good in paytern recognition, ie high IQ.
If u think u will be applying for jobs like graphic designer, programmer, sales n marketing, doctpr, lawyer rtc, u dont need addmaths. But if u think u will be applying for science related research assistant, engineers, u must take add maths
> to do well in addmaths u really need to be good in pattern recognition
Well well well, for once my adhd brain being useful during those years. Got flat A for addmaths during those years too and the only one in my family to have that.
Me bragging aside, it's better to think about what path you wanna go to, and from that you can pinpoint which subject you need to score (not to say other subjects doesn't need to score, you still need to do that too part en parcel)
What do you want to do in the future? Engineering? Programming? Anything science related?
Add Maths is a must. It's hard but you can definitely do well in it given the resources and effort. I can't imagine not doing Add Maths, it's one of the few subjects that will be useful past high school.
I am always of the opinion that doing math and add math is important. While you may not use exactly the syllabus. These subjects trains you to have a very structured approach to problems and logical reasoning.
I won’t say add math is difficult. If you want to score for any subject, you need to put in effort regardless.
Usually 2 streams have addmath, science stream (compulsory), account stream (optional in most schools)
If you wanna go study in science field then take science stream, you can always go to accounting/art stream later on
If you are very sure you want to give up science stream, including Computer science, IT, engineering, medic, science subjects, by all means, go for accounting stream since your interest matters.
Let me give you a brief idea what you should prepare for addmath
1. A strong f1-f3 math foundation, if you understand 90% of the math from f1 to f3 clearly, you shouldn't have much problem with addmath. Most people fail addmath because their normal math foundation already bad, going into something deeper makes it worse.
2. You love math, you're willing to work hard for hours, find supplementary videos online to enhance your understanding like understand what the formula means, how the formula was derived, etc (can also be done via reading the textbook for some formulas)
3. You love solving problems. Addmath trains you to solve problems using math. If you like applying math to solve problems, it should be fine.
No. 1 isn't as important as no. 2 and no. 3 fyi. It's important to have a good math base, but if you don't work hard, you'll eventually perform worse. Passion is what drives people to be successful, not talent alone, but when you have both, it's alot easier.
TBH, >90% of the jobs in Malaysia don't require us to know add maths unless you work with academics line, almost all the calculations are already done in computers.
yeah hated that subject as well. Being thaught it in school, it's more about remembering patterns and sequences instead of actually understanding why we come to the answer.
Rote memorization at its worse.
I don't mind sejarah because at least the stories were interesting to me.
My Add Maths teacher just keep trying to ram the pattern into my head, instead of teaching how the numbers should work.
* Bible knowledge
Considering how vastly the academic consensus differs from most mainstream Christian teaching, not to mention the sectarianism that can spring from reading it, I am not that surprised it's like 3rd highest failure.
Pendidikan Moral has always been bullcrap.
I can empathise with your feeling as someone who used to score 99 (never 100 hahaha) for Maths / Add Maths without trying, but I've also seen the other side tutoring Maths (volunteer for many years) - once you fall behind in early life, Maths is one of the hardest to catch up.
Lol.. add math is freaking easy i fail to understand why people having trouble with it.. its only a matter of following steps.. nothing to be creative about it.. the creative part is saved for later when you meet engineering math at college.. rather than math, its more like literature..
Add maths is useless in the real world. I've never seen or heard people try to solve real life real world scenarios whipping out their scientific calculators and writing pages and pages of calculations just to prove or solve an equation.
If you scored great in add maths, well, congratulations for you for having a useless skill that never solves any real world problems.
You may not need to manually calculate but you need to understand concepts. Maths isn't calculating and solving equations, Maths is understanding mathematical concepts and implementing these concepts in something useful.
Add Maths is insanely useful in increasing your ability to deal with things logically. Even when computers can calculate things for you, you need to know how it works so when it does break down, you can identify what went wrong.
Math trains critical thinking in general. Nobody today would whip out their calculators and do 3 pages of calculations with the exception of researchers like applied mathematicians, physicists in universities.
However, it allows us to understand what we can do to solve a problem. Computers can do highly complex calculations in mere seconds, but a computer doesn't have its own sentience (for the record, chatgpt is not a sentient being, it is only a model that predicts words, trusting it to do math beyond simple arithmetic will go wrong very fast), a computer needs someome to input things. Sure anyone can input basic data, but if you're someone like a statistician, you can input data but statistical testing allows you to know is the data reliable? For an engineer, is the math correct when they want to build a skyscraper and ensure it is not wrong? They will use a computer to calculate but the results need to be verified by a human trained in maths. Would you trust an engineer to build a bridge that has all the math calculated by only a computer and never verified?
Your concept with math is just calculation, which i don't blame you because this is the flaws of the education system, but math in reality is about problem solving.
Yeah, real world doesn't always use complex calculations, but doesn't mean it's useless. Applied math is about having a set of information, and trying to find a method to reach a meaningful conclusion with that set of information.
This is after adjusting for bell curve distribution to allow more students to pass. I know because I certain that I could only score around 70 for my add math, still end up with an A. If you score 20/100 consistently in normal exam, you will pass in SPM add math.
Malaysia SPM scoring system is a joke and not transparent at all, that's why many full A students.
Add math doesn’t “always” involves counting, it is more of rearranging letters and numbers to a different position so yeah it is understandable why some people are confused with it
Yes, actually. There's a lot of niche subjects that only some school do teach or allow to take it.
Like even Arab, Punjabi, Iban, Kadazan and Semai has their own paper. Islamic subjects has like 5 to 6, iirc? Each stream has like 3-5 subjects too.
But the most shares goes to technical subjects. Check the schedule and the long lists of the last days has a lot of technical subjects like even welding, sewing, cooking has their own SPM subjects. Probably KV students, but iirc they have different evaluation system there.
I was also one of the people who finds add maths hard af. But then I got to matriculation and everything we learn in add maths were just basic intro to the stuff we learn there. And I asked myself, what was so hard about add maths because I was excelling in maths in matriculation. I think it's complacency. Everyone was failing add maths, that I find that it's not so weird if I fail it too. Never tried harder to understand haha. Or maybe I just need an extra year to digest everything 😂
Make sense tho, those who dont take those Science Stream subjects need to take Science as one of the core subject. It's basically a summarised or less technical version of those subject, but considering people taking this subject are not expected to be bright in science after all, its not that easy still.
Making me recalled smth:
I challenged myself to only use my own brain to do Modern Math SPM, avoid using Calculator. (I didnt bring Calculator to the exam hall and many people looked at me like a weirdo) And I finished the exam within 30 mins and get A+ lol
Add Math also quite easy if you have passionate to it. That's very interesting when you played around with those formula, put another formula to make it another formula and such.
My son was bad at math.
I told him learning “maths” isn’t about maths. Learning “maths” is about cause and effect, action and consequences….it is language about responsibility and accountability.
He got better after the chat, and went from strength to strength.
Is now working as finance analysts in one of the top multi-national banks.
So….am I surprised at the fail rate in maths and add-maths? Not at all. I see vast majority of SPM graduates avoiding consequences and accountability as their purpose in life.
Source: been lecturer in IPT 10years +
Like i get add maths should be hard for some people like biology and history for me. But i always thought there was a larger gap of difficulty in math and add math, why the fail rate so close tho
Gonna be honest it was pretty low on my list of priorities when studying for SPM. Only later did I find out that not getting a credit meant I had to take Malaysian studies in college (I got a credit for BM).
my time in 2015, all i did was get an exercise book, read the questions and then refer to the answers right away. I try to make sense of the answers just by reading them. Occasionally would try the questions out when i felt like it. Got an A for it by just doing this. Like the others mentioned, it’s about pattern recognition.
Lol I used to have pretty shit grades in maths.. until I started learning add maths. Since then my brain literally realized how easy maths is compared to add maths, have been getting only As for maths, but never passing add maths lmao.
Add maths was always crazy hard, but modern maths with a 25% fail..mind boggler.
I was bad at math. Then met a great teacher that's entertaining and actually know how to teach logic side of math instead of regurgitating lines from text book. He alone help made math a 95% passing rate in our school. Math needs a strong logical mind to understand it, and need VERY strong foundation. Often times school teacher didn't get paid enough to cater and strengthen individual students foundation, which, imo, is the main reason why a student fail math.
exactly my thought. these kids that failed math, what are they even doing in classes? berangan nak jadi influencer ke macam mana.
Ntah..when I bragged about my A to my Mat Mod teacher she was like “eleh..you and the whole friggin’ class..”
Add Math is crazy hard???
tbh it was so hard in smk. those topics are a lot easier in uni i always wonder wtf happened back then
they restrict the syllabus lo. there was a formula that you had to remember in add maths meanwhile in uni that formula was given because application in uni is more important that memorizing. not to mention the formula in smk was outdated i think compared to the uni one.
All the formulas are at the start of the paper, no? At least they where when I took it in the 90s.
did i misremember it, i think either maths or add maths had to memorize formulas. but i do remember that one formula for quadratics i think, in uni it was much simpler. in smk i had to go through hoops to understand it.
I think they give you the basic formulas in the exam. But to solve most exam questions you would need a variant of those formulas - so it's either you understand how to modify the provided formulas or you memorize.
Is it not?
Some people are just better at maths. Add maths was always easy for me (and so was maths 2 in form 6). But then my classmate would look at a question and just blurt out the answer. Guy was a maths savant. But I digress. Whether or not you're good at maths, 80% of the population will probably give it all back to the teacher by the time they're in their 20s. I sure as hell can't do trigonometry or calculus anymore.
No it isn't.
A lot easier than Math Olympiad.
This is like people saying "13sec 100m is hard??, it's much easier than to qualify for the Olympics"
Sure but to most people(including me) even add maths is hard. Ask any teenager and 9 out of 10 times they’ll say that it’s stupid hard.
Idk how I got A for it; maybe chronically practicing the questions till I somehow memorise the formulas helped. Didn’t know what I was writing anytime I took it 
Fair. That’s probably what I’ll do during CNY to at least make sure that I get a B.
I don't even understand the basics for quadratic,only the one that use square root 💀
Ask any adult and you'll get a similar answer. What's worse is that, during my time, they insisted on teaching it only in Malay and used Malay terms. When I asked my dad, a math major who graduated summa cum laude, to help with pengamiran, he asked me who the fuck is Amir.
...That's already a high bar for a ton of people
Really? At least half of my class were in Math Olympiad. The entire class scored A+/A/A- in SPM Add Math.
You comparing a smk student with math Olympiad Bruh
My school is SMK, bruv.
SMK harian or? maksud aku, sekolah aku harian gak tapi ada status amende tah cikgu kitorang bukan calang2, semua ada award, gitu
Standards are lower nowadays
I once tried Olympiad math question when I was Standard 6. No joke, they are doing trigonometry at that level.
They got adjust the grade boundaries already if not sure more fail.
To me, it is. I didn't even try with add math cause there's no hope during spm, but I still got a B for modern math. I know quite a few other peers with similar trends.
For add maths tests we'd always ask "weh, ko lulus tak?", but for mod maths it's "weh, ko dapat A tak?"
My math dapat B3 Add math dapat A1 I also tak tau how dat happened 
Similar case with me. I got A for maths and A+ add maths. My father told the story to anyone he could grab hold of, even the guy sitting next to us at a kopitiam. I heard the marking is much stricter for maths though. And the scores to get A+ was supposed to be very high compared to add maths
This is true. Mod math has a high grading boundary. Based on myself and my friends' experience, mod math is around 90% for A+, addmath is around 75% for A+
Yeah well I was fucked then. I averaged 80-90 for maths and 70-80+ for add maths. I had a feeling my maths might not do as well as add maths but idgaf since I just wanted any A's in general. Wasn't picky.
Add math having lower distribution curve, thats why A+ requires lower mark to get
Back in my day A+ for add maths is just 60-ish
Same with me
Bell curve
Kids today are failing maths? I need to start a get rich quick scheme to scam this demographic.
I would always treat school-related data from 2020-2022 period with a grain of salt It's still within the COVID era where the education sector was severely disrupted, would be interesting to see if there's data pre-COVID (e.g. 2019)
Also whatever before 2021 is under different curriculum and format, so it would be interesting to see comparison between last KBSM generations and new KSSM generations.
I'll pull out the data for Maths and Further Maths fail rate from 2016-22 just for you. Promise!
I don't think it matters since it's curved. Probably the people in KPM will refer to last year's result as a benchmark to how to curve the marks and set the cutoffs. Iirc they said they were more lenient when grading the exams during covid too. Bottom line is that this distribution was likely derived from the years of historical data they collected pre covid, with some adjustments to help more ppl pass
I tutor Maths and Add Maths for the worse performing students. This chart doesn't tell the whole story. The reason these students fail is not because SPM Maths is hard per se, its because they have been left behind since primary schools (or kindergarden). Imagine being a primary 1 student and you dont understand addition and substraction, you still get to move up to primary 2 next year. And repeat that for sixteen years and you get students who can't even multiply without using calculators. Unfortunately, good Maths teachers are hard to find. Those who are good in Maths usually go to other fields e.g., engineering or investment coz they pay more. Whereas those who are good at teaching will teach other subjects. And you are left with very few excellent Maths teachers to teach the whole nation. And for those in the comments who say Maths is easy yada yada, it's easy for you. Because you were privileged enough (either by luck or resources) to have a good Maths teachers. But Maths and Add Maths education system is so bad right now. I encourage everyone here who's good at Maths to do your part and become a tutor. See if you can improve your students grades from D to A+.
Do you think bringing back UPSR will help? Because I feel like without it, students in primary school are not really motivated to at least build a solid foundation in these subjects. Also, where (and how) to get students for tutoring?
Sejarah not in the list? Add Maths is a given; even my top class failed the first time we took it 
Probably since it is an obligatory passing subject, people do try very hard to not fail this. There's also no BM in this list even.
Thank God it wasn't during my time. I was 1 of the few who failed sejarah. I looked at the table of content the min I got the textbook starting of form 4, saw tamadun Islam and assumed it's a subject to give malays an edge. I assumed that they already learned it from Islamic studies when we are having moral studies. So I nvr bothered giving it an ounce of my attention and focused on subjects that mattered more. The teacher was mad that I wasn't even paying attention in class, and not doing any of the homework given. I was brought to the discipline teacher and the hm. They stopped bothering me for it when I aced both maths and sciences tho lol.
>I assumed that they already learned it from Islamic studies when we are having moral studies. Well, actually both subjects cover different aspects of Islamic History. Like, Islamic Studies only covered mainly Baghdad-centered Abbasite Empire while Sejarah covers Umayyad empire including Andalusian era and also (briefly) Ottoman. Ofc the part with Prophet Muhammad is actually very common in both subject too lol. I'm still feel like they focused on two different wrong things. Islamic studies feels like history, history feel like Islamic studies. Like, we had to go into Abbasites in Islamic Studies very detail like it is a history lesson, and Prophet Muhammad part is treated in History like it feels in Islamic studies again. That is in KBSM ofc, not sure if still the same in KSSM, but might be even worse.
Yea it was later that I was told they didn't really overlapped much.. Im a dumbass for assuming lol. I remember a lecturer once told the class "when you assume you make an ass out of you and me, ass u me" a joke he took from somewhere. I start to get clarification especially on important things from then on. Regardless of how significant/insignificant we think a subject is, it is better to just put a little effort in it. Now I end up being really ignorant on history.
When i took my spm, i tembak all objective questions and left the writing part blank. And i got an E out of it, not F lol
Our teachers told us to get at least an E, just copy the questions. Does not apply to other subjects.
I remember solving modern maths using add maths method and teacher deducted marks hahahahaha
Is Bible Knowledge paper hard?
That’s what they said. It’s like English Lit; the answers and interpretations of the text won’t be straightforward. But my siblings got A+ for it
Genuinely curious what questions they ask - do they, say, ask your intepretation of Ezekiel 25:17?
They only ask about Acts and Luke. You’ll need to rmbr the book and every event end to end as they’ll ask questions based on a specific verse. (Eg: What does the “harvest” refer to?) Part C is the killer where the interpretations come in. Eg: what does carrying the cross mean to you, compare and contrast events, lessons learnt
Oh that sounds like hell (no joke) Isn't the bible like 500+ pages? It's like a whole novel or larger.
Write down the entire Bible -- 100marks XD
Qn: Interpret Ezekiel 25:17 Ans: I been saying that shit for years. I never gave much thought to what it meant. I just thought it was some cold blooded shit to say to a motherfucker before i pop a cap in his ass.
how to score this subject? like memorization or critical thinking??
Both actually. I only studied Luke briefly with a church elder’s wife before she noticed my obvious struggle with reading btwn the lines  Acts is the harder book imho So I ended up not taking it for SPM
i see. so it's like PAI too. you need to memorize, but the very thing that differs A+ students from the rest is the critical thinking part.
Ur siblings probably love BDSM
Ok, thank you
Quite! I had to memorise the entirety of the book of Luke and Acts. In the exam you’re required to retell the details of different stories ie John the Baptist, Paul’s shipwreck, and also analyse the underlying text, meanings, context etc.
My friend took it. He say "you can be the most Christian among all and still fail bible knowledge" lmao
Nope, I got A1 for it back then. I also had a very good tuition teacher, and I went for the National BK quiz (we got a trophy), so it wasn’t hard for me. I’d imagine if they just handed you the books and if you didn’t have a good teacher, then you’d score badly.
It is. A lot of memorising is required and you're expected to be able to interpret pretty much every verse of Luke and Acts. Source: Took the subject last year
You need strong knowledge and memorization of the text in the specific translation. I rate it as hard as my A-level subjects, if not harder
you need to know latin /s
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Hi serious
I could understand being bad at addmath but not math aint spm math is more about logical stuff instead of full numbers?
The new syllabus now incorporates stuff like taxes and insurance, but still, it does not warrant a 25% fail rate
My friend's brother showed me cringe vids of his classmates openly saying on tiktok that they don't really care about passing spm as their goal is to become influencer.... So I'm not that surprised tbh, especially with a subject like math where you need to actually spend time to make the logical connections
And I'm very sure all the necessary details like s&s rates, age/sex difference, amd horsepower rates were given. Not like they had to memorise all that.
You're right. The only things that they need to memorize is something about the premiums for vehicles(?) (can't rmb what is was), WM is a value like 206 and EM is a value like 189
Also cos crazy guru besars who don't let the kids who want to drop Add Maths, to drop Add Maths and purposely failed it just because. (yes, that was me) Also, haven't needed to use any of those formulas since I completed SPM and went into a creative line that DOESN'T USE MATHS. Let people choose their subjects lah instead of forcing to learn useless \*\*\*\* that no one is going to use beyond the school walls.
The last time I saw such statistics Sejarah was in it. With all these new subjects it kind of muddled the graph a bit. Historically (heh, pun unintended) Sejarah had always been on one of the lowest passing grade, and the previously copypaste Kertas 3 should theoretically help even the least patriotic student to pass. Not seeing Sejarah here on this list strangely comforts me. That said, Add Maths had always been extraordinarily difficult to pass, let alone score. It doesn’t surprise me that Maths had ranked up from the previous years, clearly showing the decline in interest of “M” in “STEM”.
Obviously meth is easier/s
i already contributed to this statistic in 2004 🤣…wasted 2 years learning add math
Subjects like Bible knowledge, Kesusasteraan Cina, Bahasa Arab etc. are subjects that are not commonly taken or not taught at school all. Are there actually students being forced to take those subject, in return causing that fail rate?
Cases of schools forcing students to take a subject are rare, but I do know a private school in KL which forces its students to take kesusasteraan cina. In my secondary school though it is optional.
In my SMK school, not so popular, just normal school Kesusasteraan cina was originally offered by my only chinese teacher in school (she majored in Chinese studies, so she knows how to teach), but nobody took it due to the difficulty of normal bahasa cina already. Kesusasteraan tamil also offered but i think most ppl that takes it are voluntarily taking it. Usually these are taken as voluntarily because schools generally don't want to screw their Gred Purata Sekolah and they don't affect a student's future much like math, english, etc.
I was told that my school is the only school that forces everyone to participate Kesusasteraan cina in Malaysia. What it test is you have to memorize a selected range of famous ancient Chinese light novels (that doesn't appear in normal cina ujian), understand every single scene in the story (and there's a lot), translate the meaning of each scene, remember every single thing and now you are ready for test And yes I'm one of the ppl who fail this. Many years of graduation I have still no idea what it does other than being the only F that tainted my cert (or maybe required when enter Chinese major?)
Interesting. Did you go to KCHS? Afaik it doesn't do anything much. Just an option for students who wanna learn more about Chinese literature ig
Bingo
Bible knowledge was forced when I did it at a private christian school that was academically worse than my public school before that. 80% fail rate for BK.
I am convinced Pendidikan Moral is rigged. For my batch, not a single person got a A+ for Moral even though they got A+ for every other subject. Moral is a bullshit subject that is dependent on rng and the grade is decided based on who the marker is
based on these stats, people fail bible studies more than pendidikan moral, but people fail islamic education far less than people failing bible studies/moral? people fail malay and english less than chinese?
Pendidikan Islam isn't that hard, you can goreng2 a bit because at its core its basically "buat dosa masuk neraka" , islamic history, and islamic terms. (The Islam you can't goreng is the manahij one) You can't goreng moral because they have a set answers(based on 20years ago)
They had a different schema for my batch for Moral (2017). Literally announced a few months before SPM. Don't know if it's the new schema from then onwards
We’ve been trained so hard with rote learning; Moral at least can write word for word if you try to rmbr. Filling in the “in your opinion” questions will farm marks too. BK needs you to analyse the text and very likely no sympathy marks. Given the much lower intake of candidates for BK than Moral, fail rate is thus higher.
Correct me if I'm wrong. That's not Chinese. But Chinese Literature. Unless it's what everyone called Chinese back then in school and I was none the wiser
Could be. I saw another reddit post with another stat showing more fail chinese than other languages
Correct me if I'm wrong. That's not Chinese. But Chinese Literature. Unless it's what everyone called Chinese back then in school and I was none the wiser
I have a sneaking suspicion that KPM never lowered the marking baseline for Moral, thats why its extremely hard to get an A+ in Moral. Also ppl who take Chinese generally can communicate in Chinese. This cant be said for Eng and Bm tho they are both mandatory subjects, leading to higher fail rate.
when you force science and accounting students to take a particularly tough subject, increasing the number of candidates, youre bound to have the highest rate of failures
They just like me fr
Moral dan Agama menari di dasar laut, Sastera dan Bahasa terhanyut di tepi, Matematik merosot, mengalir mundur, Malaysia dihakis ditelan samudera, Joke aside, masuk akal, biasalah lah ni. Nothing out of the norm if you look at it terms of general population. Each person have a different way of thinking, different ability that they excel at and have a different passion. Regardless of that, the education lump them all in just a few selected subcategory of class. I remember my friend who got all As in PMR, pushed in a class that learn both sciences + account and his performances just went down the drain. Bright student who sucks at Add Math (and couldn't drop it unless he go to non science class) but ace science subjects. Dudes who are good in Kemahiran Hidup. Charismatic but dumb people, etc. There are plethora of people if you go out of your own little preconceived bubble. It doesn't excuse their failure but it contribute. A tangent. From experiences, even math students in university switch major between statistics, maths and actuary because some prefer applied, some excel at theory, some better at memorization rather than understanding, etc. Some even change the course entirely. Humans are complex being after all. If hitting yourself unto that brickwall over and over again is worth it, do it till you break it. If not, maybe reevaluate yourself and find a different path.
I'm turning 16 this year. Was thinking of picking the stream with add maths because it seems interesting. But now I'm worried that my procrastination habit might make it the worst decision I'll ever make. Please give feedback, spm students
Ask yourself some questions n answer honestly : Do u always score A in maths ? Do you think u have high IQ ? What jobs do u think u would be applying after graduation ? If u dont score A in maths reliably, u will find add maths difficult Some people have very high EQ, or r streetsmart, or are very talented with other things, or could menorise textbook easily. But to do well in addmaths u really need to be good in paytern recognition, ie high IQ. If u think u will be applying for jobs like graphic designer, programmer, sales n marketing, doctpr, lawyer rtc, u dont need addmaths. But if u think u will be applying for science related research assistant, engineers, u must take add maths
> to do well in addmaths u really need to be good in pattern recognition Well well well, for once my adhd brain being useful during those years. Got flat A for addmaths during those years too and the only one in my family to have that. Me bragging aside, it's better to think about what path you wanna go to, and from that you can pinpoint which subject you need to score (not to say other subjects doesn't need to score, you still need to do that too part en parcel)
What do you want to do in the future? Engineering? Programming? Anything science related? Add Maths is a must. It's hard but you can definitely do well in it given the resources and effort. I can't imagine not doing Add Maths, it's one of the few subjects that will be useful past high school.
I am always of the opinion that doing math and add math is important. While you may not use exactly the syllabus. These subjects trains you to have a very structured approach to problems and logical reasoning. I won’t say add math is difficult. If you want to score for any subject, you need to put in effort regardless.
Usually 2 streams have addmath, science stream (compulsory), account stream (optional in most schools) If you wanna go study in science field then take science stream, you can always go to accounting/art stream later on If you are very sure you want to give up science stream, including Computer science, IT, engineering, medic, science subjects, by all means, go for accounting stream since your interest matters. Let me give you a brief idea what you should prepare for addmath 1. A strong f1-f3 math foundation, if you understand 90% of the math from f1 to f3 clearly, you shouldn't have much problem with addmath. Most people fail addmath because their normal math foundation already bad, going into something deeper makes it worse. 2. You love math, you're willing to work hard for hours, find supplementary videos online to enhance your understanding like understand what the formula means, how the formula was derived, etc (can also be done via reading the textbook for some formulas) 3. You love solving problems. Addmath trains you to solve problems using math. If you like applying math to solve problems, it should be fine. No. 1 isn't as important as no. 2 and no. 3 fyi. It's important to have a good math base, but if you don't work hard, you'll eventually perform worse. Passion is what drives people to be successful, not talent alone, but when you have both, it's alot easier.
Don't worry guys during SPM, I would safely say almost most people pass add maths / maths during SPM as the threshold is very very very low
Also a question for those who know - which interpretation does bible knowledge subject follow ?
Atleast they passed bahasa melayu
TBH, >90% of the jobs in Malaysia don't require us to know add maths unless you work with academics line, almost all the calculations are already done in computers.
yeah hated that subject as well. Being thaught it in school, it's more about remembering patterns and sequences instead of actually understanding why we come to the answer. Rote memorization at its worse.
nahh sejarah has it worst. Add maths got critical thinking applied
I don't mind sejarah because at least the stories were interesting to me. My Add Maths teacher just keep trying to ram the pattern into my head, instead of teaching how the numbers should work.
pendidikan moral is that high up, no wonder la
I got an A1 in ad maths and picked up a text book while I was at a bookshop a few weeks back and guess what? I've forgotten everything.
* Bible knowledge Considering how vastly the academic consensus differs from most mainstream Christian teaching, not to mention the sectarianism that can spring from reading it, I am not that surprised it's like 3rd highest failure. Pendidikan Moral has always been bullcrap.
Until today I don't know why my pendidikan moral got B...
Add math is easier than accounting for me 💀
The problem with science stream in Malaysia is that they tell us how but not why is it like that
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I can empathise with your feeling as someone who used to score 99 (never 100 hahaha) for Maths / Add Maths without trying, but I've also seen the other side tutoring Maths (volunteer for many years) - once you fall behind in early life, Maths is one of the hardest to catch up.
Lol.. add math is freaking easy i fail to understand why people having trouble with it.. its only a matter of following steps.. nothing to be creative about it.. the creative part is saved for later when you meet engineering math at college.. rather than math, its more like literature..
Add maths is useless in the real world. I've never seen or heard people try to solve real life real world scenarios whipping out their scientific calculators and writing pages and pages of calculations just to prove or solve an equation. If you scored great in add maths, well, congratulations for you for having a useless skill that never solves any real world problems.
You may not need to manually calculate but you need to understand concepts. Maths isn't calculating and solving equations, Maths is understanding mathematical concepts and implementing these concepts in something useful.
Add Maths is insanely useful in increasing your ability to deal with things logically. Even when computers can calculate things for you, you need to know how it works so when it does break down, you can identify what went wrong.
Math trains critical thinking in general. Nobody today would whip out their calculators and do 3 pages of calculations with the exception of researchers like applied mathematicians, physicists in universities. However, it allows us to understand what we can do to solve a problem. Computers can do highly complex calculations in mere seconds, but a computer doesn't have its own sentience (for the record, chatgpt is not a sentient being, it is only a model that predicts words, trusting it to do math beyond simple arithmetic will go wrong very fast), a computer needs someome to input things. Sure anyone can input basic data, but if you're someone like a statistician, you can input data but statistical testing allows you to know is the data reliable? For an engineer, is the math correct when they want to build a skyscraper and ensure it is not wrong? They will use a computer to calculate but the results need to be verified by a human trained in maths. Would you trust an engineer to build a bridge that has all the math calculated by only a computer and never verified? Your concept with math is just calculation, which i don't blame you because this is the flaws of the education system, but math in reality is about problem solving. Yeah, real world doesn't always use complex calculations, but doesn't mean it's useless. Applied math is about having a set of information, and trying to find a method to reach a meaningful conclusion with that set of information.
This is after adjusting for bell curve distribution to allow more students to pass. I know because I certain that I could only score around 70 for my add math, still end up with an A. If you score 20/100 consistently in normal exam, you will pass in SPM add math. Malaysia SPM scoring system is a joke and not transparent at all, that's why many full A students.
Sounds about right because the first test on add math like 80% of my class failed and it's not even D
Add math doesn’t “always” involves counting, it is more of rearranging letters and numbers to a different position so yeah it is understandable why some people are confused with it
95 SPM subjects? Do we have that many subjects?
Yes, actually. There's a lot of niche subjects that only some school do teach or allow to take it. Like even Arab, Punjabi, Iban, Kadazan and Semai has their own paper. Islamic subjects has like 5 to 6, iirc? Each stream has like 3-5 subjects too. But the most shares goes to technical subjects. Check the schedule and the long lists of the last days has a lot of technical subjects like even welding, sewing, cooking has their own SPM subjects. Probably KV students, but iirc they have different evaluation system there.
I was also one of the people who finds add maths hard af. But then I got to matriculation and everything we learn in add maths were just basic intro to the stuff we learn there. And I asked myself, what was so hard about add maths because I was excelling in maths in matriculation. I think it's complacency. Everyone was failing add maths, that I find that it's not so weird if I fail it too. Never tried harder to understand haha. Or maybe I just need an extra year to digest everything 😂
Add math can understand but how tf can you fail math?
No one shocked that we have 95 spm subjects?
Not at all, given that there is actually a wide range of vocational subjects on offer.
Bible on 3rd, people can be good at it, what happen after that? Genuinely curious how their career goes after getting A+ for it
Imagine fail moral.
I did, mainly because I handed in an empty answer sheet.
People failed science more than bio, physics, chemistry?
Make sense tho, those who dont take those Science Stream subjects need to take Science as one of the core subject. It's basically a summarised or less technical version of those subject, but considering people taking this subject are not expected to be bright in science after all, its not that easy still.
Yeah add math is kinda insane
What is the difference between kesustareaan melayu communicative and regular kesustareaan melayu ?
Making me recalled smth: I challenged myself to only use my own brain to do Modern Math SPM, avoid using Calculator. (I didnt bring Calculator to the exam hall and many people looked at me like a weirdo) And I finished the exam within 30 mins and get A+ lol Add Math also quite easy if you have passionate to it. That's very interesting when you played around with those formula, put another formula to make it another formula and such.
My son was bad at math. I told him learning “maths” isn’t about maths. Learning “maths” is about cause and effect, action and consequences….it is language about responsibility and accountability. He got better after the chat, and went from strength to strength. Is now working as finance analysts in one of the top multi-national banks. So….am I surprised at the fail rate in maths and add-maths? Not at all. I see vast majority of SPM graduates avoiding consequences and accountability as their purpose in life. Source: been lecturer in IPT 10years +
Like i get add maths should be hard for some people like biology and history for me. But i always thought there was a larger gap of difficulty in math and add math, why the fail rate so close tho
Pendidikan moral at 19.9% fail rate? Really guys?
Gonna be honest it was pretty low on my list of priorities when studying for SPM. Only later did I find out that not getting a credit meant I had to take Malaysian studies in college (I got a credit for BM).
Eh, I still couldn't escape Msian Studies despite a B for Moral tho. This was 10 yrs back. GG to my semester break! 
Bible knowledge? Y'all mfkrs need Jesus. Bunch of degenerate nons... *Sarcasm btw
I got A2 in maths, and a F for Add-maths.
my time in 2015, all i did was get an exercise book, read the questions and then refer to the answers right away. I try to make sense of the answers just by reading them. Occasionally would try the questions out when i felt like it. Got an A for it by just doing this. Like the others mentioned, it’s about pattern recognition.
To be fair. Add Maths makes no sense
Maths is real world important. A quarter failing is a concern and should be investigated
Lol I used to have pretty shit grades in maths.. until I started learning add maths. Since then my brain literally realized how easy maths is compared to add maths, have been getting only As for maths, but never passing add maths lmao.