Primary School Achievement Test (Malaysia)
Primary School Achievement Test, also known as Ujian Pencapaian Sekolah Rendah, was a national examination taken by all students in Malaysia at the end of their sixth year in primary school before they leave for secondary school. It is prepared and examined by the Malaysian Examinations Syndicate, an agency that constitutes the Ministry of Education.
The UPSR tests were first established in 1988 to replace the Standard Five assessment.
Starting from 2016, students in national schools are required to take six subjects. Students in Chinese and Tamil national-type schools are required to take two additional language subjects, totalling eight subjects.
Multiple choice questions are tested using a standardised optical answer sheet that uses optical mark recognition for detecting answers.
This exam is held annually on the first Monday of September. The score is calculated based on a bell curve, thus the passing grade is reflected by the yearly performance.
Effective 2021, the UPSR exams were abolished and replaced with school-based assessments, seeing it suffer the same fate as the PMR examinations.
Subjects
The subjects that are taken in this exam include:- Bahasa Malaysia
- Bahasa Malaysia
- Mathematics
- Science
- English
- English
- Chinese 华文 - Compulsory for Chinese school students only
- Chinese 华文 - Compulsory for Chinese school students only
- Tamil தமிழ் மொழி - Compulsory for Tamil school students only
- Tamil தமிழ் மொழி - Compulsory for Tamil school students only
Mathematics
In 1995, UPSR Mathematics tests were changed to include subjective questions.The mathematics examination is divided into two papers, paper 1 and paper 2.
Starting from 2016, the exam is one hour long for each paper. Paper 1 is a multiple choice paper and consists of forty questions, all have a one-point score value. Paper 2 is the subjective area of Maths. There are 15 questions here in total, the first five questions have a three-point score value, questions 6-10 have a four-point score value, and the last five have a five-point score value.
Questions that are frequently asked in this exam are fractions, subtraction, multiplication, division, addition, area and volume, mass, perimeter, decimal points, average, data, digit numbers, percentage, money, time, date and duration.
Science
Science was first made a part of the UPSR in 1997.Starting from 2016, the science examination is divided into two papers, paper 1 and paper 2. Each paper lasts for an hour.
For paper 1, students are given 40 multiple choice questions with a weight of one mark each. For paper 2, students answer subjective questions. In the subjective paper, there are eight questions and each question has 3 to 5 sub-questions which carry 1 to 3 marks depending on the question. The total weight that can be given here is 40.
Examining and result
After the completion of all exams, the examination papers will be brought to centres across the country to be evaluated. The distribution of papers across all the states can be random or otherwise, according to the wishes of the invigilator. All objective answer sheets are examined by computer, and all subjective answer sheets are marked by professional examiners. After completion the examination of all papers, the marks will be registered into an online system. A council will be called to ascertain the specific marks for the grade of each subject. It also may be 85+ for an A.The results are then printed and distributed to the education department of every district. Usually, the results are announced on the last Thursday of the school year, but in some years, it is published during the school holidays.A new grading scheme was introduced in 2016 as below:
A: 80-100
B: 65-79
C: 50-64
D: 40-49
E: 0-39
Grade E is the only failing grade for all subjects.
Format change
In 2016, several changes were made to the format of all the important subjects :Pemahaman
The Pemahaman paper has 2 sections, A and B. Section A has 20 objective questions for 40 marks and Section B has 5 questions for 60 marks. This exam lasted for 1 hour and 15 minutes.Penulisan
The new format for Penulisan consists of three sections, namely A, B and C. The time allowed is one hour and fifteen minutes.For section A, a picture will be given. Then, pupils must build five compound sentences based on the picture. The marks allocated for this section is 10. Occasionally, however, pictures might not be provided and to substitute that, candidates might be asked to write sentences about a graph, a mind map, multiple images, or a time table.
For section B, candidates must write a review about the stimulus given to be written on the UPSR paper. The marks allocated for this section is 15 marks.
For Section C, The student must choose one out of two questions and write an essay of between 80 and 100 words. The marks allocated for this section is 25 marks.
English
English now has Comprehension and Writing papers, unlike the previous single paper.The questions in the Comprehension paper are grouped into two sections: A with 20 multiple choice questions dealing with Grammar, Vocabulary and Comprehension; and B with 5 questions, dealing with Social expressions, Comprehension, and HOTS