'UPSR'

Ujian Pencapaian Sekolah Rendah, also known as Ujian Penilaian Sekolah Rendah (commonly abbreviated as UPSR; Malay for Primary School Evaluation Test), is 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 (Lembaga Peperiksaan Malaysia), an agency that constitutes the Ministry of Education. Students in national schools (sekolah kebangsaan) are required to take five subjects, in addition to an aptitude test. Students in Chinese and Tamil national-type schools (sekolah jenis kebangsaan) are required to take two additional language subjects, totaling seven 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 second Tuesday of September. The score is calculated based on a bell curve, thus the passing grade is reflected by the yearly performance.

Subjects

The subjects that are taken in this exam include:

• Bahasa Malaysia (Pemahaman or Malay Comprehension)
• Bahasa Malaysia (Penulisan or Malay Writing)
• English
• Mathematics
• Science
• Chinese (Pemahaman or Chinese Comprehension) - Compulsory for Chinese school students only
• Chinese (Penulisan or Chinese Writing) - Compulsory for Chinese school students only
• Tamil (Pemahaman or Tamil Comprehension) - Compulsory for Tamil school students only
• Tamil (Penulisan or Tamil Writing) - Compulsory for Tamil school students only
• Aptitude Test

English

The English examination is divided into 2 papers.

Paper 1 contains 40 objective questions and the student has 50 minutes to answer them. Each question is worth 1 mark.

• Questions 1-4 - general questions.
• Questions 5-7 - fill-in-the-blanks based on short paragraph with pictures.
• Questions 8-15 - dialog
• Questions 16-21 - grammar
• Questions 22-23 - punctuation
• Questions 24-25 - spelling
• Questions 26-30 - similar to questions 5-7.
• Questions 31-40 - comprehension questions based on a story, label and other things.

Paper 2, which has subjective questions, contains three sections. A total of 40 marks has been allocated for this whole paper.

• Section 1 asks the students to describe a picture in 5 sentences. This question bears 10 points.

• Section 2 has two questions. The student is given 3 choices of items, packages, etc., each with their own pros and cons. In the first question, the student has to correctly fill in the details of the items mentioned in a table. In the second question, the student is given a situation that involves the three items (birthday party, movie with friend, etc.) and has to pick one of the three items and write a paragraph about why he chose it. Question one bears 10 points and Question two bears 5 points

• Section 3 contains 3 or 4 pictures that tell a story. Below each picture, a few words are given to guide the student. The student is to write an essay using all the words given in any order they like. This section is worth 15 points.

Mathematics

The mathematics examination is one hour and forty minutes long, and is divided into two sections, a "section A" and "section B". Section A is multiple choice and consists of forty questions, all have a one point score value. Section B, like Science, is the subjective area of Maths. There are 20 questions here in total, the first five have a one point score value, questions 6-14 have a two-point score value, and the last five have a three point score value. Many students think that this exam is "tough" because section A's time duration is only 1 hour and they can't finish it in time.

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

The science paper lasts for 1 hour and 15 minutes. This exam is divided into two sections, A and B.

For section A, students are given 30 multiple choice questions with a weight of one marks of each. For section B, students answer subjective questions. In the subjective paper, there are usually 3-5 questions and each question has 4 to 5 sub-questions which carry 1 to 3 marks depending on the question. Usually, the subjective questions will start with a diagram of an experiment and the questions are based on that diagram. The total weight that can be given here is 20.

When one adds the score of both sections, that person must multiply it by 2 to get the grand total. The first batch who took this exam were the candidates sitting for the UPSR year 1997.

Aptitude Test

Introduced in 2009, this test is used to evaluate students' aptitude and are written in the pupil's own language.

The one and a half hour test comprises 61 multiple choice questions, divided into three sections based on three core areas namely thinking skills, problem solving and decision making. Students are graded according to band scores, ranging from Band 1 (Extremely Limited User) to Band 6

Format change

In 2005, several changes were made to the format of the 2 Malay papers, Pemahaman and Penulisan:

Pemahaman

• The Pemahaman paper now has only 40 questions (previously 50 questions) and the duration of this exam has been reduced by 10 minutes to 50 minutes. Previously, this exam lasted for 1 hour.

Penulisan

• The new format for Penulisan papers however are slightly different from early 2005. Formerly, each paper consists of two sections namely sections 1 and 2. For section A, there are two subsections. Candidates can choose to answer one of two questions given while for section 2, every candidate must answer the question given. The time given for the older format is one hour.

• For the newer format, each papers consists of three sections that are sections A, B and C. Candidates only have 1 hour and 15 minutes to answer all three sections.

Section A

For section A, a picture will be given. Then, pupils must build five compound sentences based on the picture. The suggested time to answer this section is 15 minutes. 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 on a graph, a pie chart, multiple images, or a time table.

Section B

Section B is similar to the previous format of the Penulisan paper. For this section, candidates must choose one of three karangan or essays to be written on the UPSR paper. The suggested time to answer this section is 35 minutes. The total marks allocated for this section is 30 marks.

Section C

For Section C, there is a short story that contains some moral values. The student must write a paragraph containing the moral values. Pupils who get SK (Sekolah Kebangsaan) paper must give at least 5 moral values; pupils who get SJK (Sekolah Jenis Kebangsaan) paper must give 4 moral values only, unless given other instructions. The suggested time to answer this section is 20 minutes. Initially, the pupils were supposed to write their moral values in more than fifty words (SJK - forty), but now, they have to write it in less than fifty words (SJK - forty). The total marks allocated for this section is 20 marks.