The overall Sijil Pelajaran Malaysia (SPM) achievement (equivalent to O-Level (Ordinary Level) in the British education system) declined with fewer students scoring straight A's, and educators attribute this to possibly a change in the way questions were structured. Of the 429,003 students who took the examination last year, 11,289 (2.63 per cent) scored straight A's - compared to 13,970 (3.16 per cent) out of 442,588 students in 2013. The National Average Grade (GPN) was at 5.08, compared with 4.93 in 2013. (A lower GPN shows a better overall performance). Education director-general Datuk Seri Dr Khair Mohamad Yusof said the decline in student performance and the reduced number of top scorers could be due to a change in the way questions were structured. Under the Malaysia Education Blueprint 2013-2025, the ministry has steadily increased the number of “higher order thinking skills” questions in public examinations, with such questions expected to comprise 75% of papers for SPM core subjects by 2016.

Students who scored 9A+ and above in the 2014 Sijil Pelajaran Malaysia (SPM) examination will each be automatically offered a bursary to take up a preparatory or pre-university course in the country. The Education Ministry in a statement said the bursary was to cover their course fee, and subsistence and accommodation allowance before furthering their studies for a degree locally or overseas.

British Council commentary:

SPM is equivalent to the O-Level and is the second last public examination at the secondary school level before the entry into a tertiary level education at a university or other higher education institutions. Over the years there has been a lot of debates/criticisms about the current education system in Malaysia is too examination-oriented and over-emphasizes rote-learning with institutions of higher learning fast becoming mere diploma mills. Like most Asian countries, Malaysia has so far focused only on public examination results as important determinants of students’ progression to higher levels of education or occupational opportunities. Therefore, there are public debates on the issue of teaching to these examinations has often translated into debates whether these examinations are able to produce human capital which is current and relevant to what the society needs, and also whether these examinations should be abolished. The challenge is that these public examinations do not currently test the full range of skills that the education system aspires to produce. Plenty of external reviews on current examination papers also noted that these assessments would benefit from the inclusion of more questions testing higher-order thinking skills, such as application, analysis, synthesis and evaluation.

The Ministry of Education has launched a comprehensive review of the education system in Malaysia and introduced School-based Assessment as part of the National Transformation Programme, which is a holistic assessment which assesses the cognitive, affective, and psychomotor domains encompassing intellectual, emotional, spiritual and physical aspects that covers academic and non-academic fields. It is to be carried out continuously in schools by teachers during the teaching and learning process. The new format is to enable students to be assessed on a broader range of output over a longer period of time, and hopes to reduce the overall emphasis on teaching to the test, so that teachers can focus more time on delivering meaningful learning.