SEPTEMBER 30 — As with many educators, I read with concern the recent announcement by Deputy Prime Minister Datuk Seri Ahmad Zahid Hamidi about the national education policy to address, among other things, the huge number of SPM dropouts.

It appears that 10,177 students didn’t take the exam last year.

Let me say at the start though that I’m not exactly a huge fan of these government exams.

The delivery of the curriculum is wanting heavily (and thus the "learning” disseminated is questionable), the assessments barely valid, the forced bell curve into which grading is squeezed is problematic, the "institutional” aspect can render the education superficial, etc.

Long and short, exams like SPM are, to me at least, overrated.

Having said that, I cannot see a positive reason to refuse to take the exam.

By all means, I believe students must reject the sticky symbolic "signifiers” (especially of status) which comes with the results of exams like the SPM. But dropping out of the exam has almost no benefit whatsoever.

Dropping out suggests one has given up on formal education which, despite all its misgivings and faults, remains critical for young adults today (especially in their teenage years).

Globally, young people without at least a high school qualification face long-term unemployment and risk social exclusion and poverty.

They also generally have poorer health outcomes and many become dependent on social welfare services.

Sadly, the effects are multigenerational. Children whose parents dropped out of high school are more likely to have all the adverse outcomes related to education, health and finances than children of people who finished high school (see note 1).

Hence, a growing number of dropouts (and, thankfully, the 2023 number is a reduced one from more than 14,000 the previous year) is a matter of some alarm.

The reasons why students drop out from high school are well documented.

Pervasive academic failure, zero engagement during lessons, financial issues in the family (including the need to help with the family’s earnings) all play a part.

However, as an educator, I suppose the only area I can give "advice” on is the schooling or classroom context.

So, what can school leaders and teachers do to help the individual student thinking of dropping out?

First, we need to understand that every lesson we teach involving said students will either bring them a step nearer or further away from dropping out.

Every encounter that every teacher or lecturer has with a student can either motivate them, in spite of everything else happening in their lives, to spend that one extra day or week in school — or the opposite.

Are we showing enough kindness to said students? Do we listen to them? Do we help engage them more actively in class?

Have we taken those extra few minutes (or longer) to talk to them? Do we teachers notice students who are "spaced out” or looking troubled and, well, try to help?

Maybe even by taking a few minutes away from the lesson and talking about something which interests them?

Or does our lesson bore them to tears? Or are teachers so pumped up on our own authority that if their individual or family issues don’t drive them away from school, our superiority complex, our scoldings and rebukes may?

How are our student counselling and pastoral units? Are our schools proactively reaching out to students with a "I may drop out very soon” cloud hanging over them?

As with many problems in society, the problem of school dropouts is a multi-faceted issue.

There is no silver bullet or magic wand here. I’m hearing that even if school is great and the family is fine some students may still drop out from formal education in pursuit of their million-dollar You-Tuber or Tik-Toker dreams.

So maybe, and in conclusion, teachers can include such topics in the secondary school classroom: Should we skip SPM to become a social media influencer?

* Note 1: That a majority of the SPM dropouts are from the B40 group certainly proves this point.

** This is the personal opinion of the columnist.