A Personal Review Of KSSR and KBSR

As a teacher i must adopt with the new curricular system in Malaysia. To prepare daily lesson plan is becoming dramatic for me because of the transition from Kurikulum Bersepadu Sekolah Rendah (KBSR) to Kurikulum Standard Sekolah Rendah (KSSR) for primary schools. All i need to do is to actually understand the concept and objectives of KSSR so that I would be able to teach the students accordingly. First of all, what is changes between KBSR and KSSR other than the different acronyms? KBSR being important for many trials that the National Education Board wanted to perform on Malaysian students. KBSR established such as Reading, Writing and Calculation. In English Language Teaching (ELT) classrooms where the language skills such as Speaking, Writing, Listening and Reading are emphasized at a very basic level. Malay Language used as the medium of instruction for all the subjects except English Language subject. KBSR focuses on how to prepare students with basic language skills that can be used in daily life communication meanwhile KSSR focuses on improvising the already basic learned skills to a better and effective communication. KSSR was implemented in the year of 2011 with new Modular based syllabus. The new curriculum is based on six key areas which are communication, spiritual attitude and values, humanitarianism, literacy in science and technology, physical and personal development to produce holistic individuals . My personal thought is students in basic levels have to master many skills in KSSR syllabus which later on can burden the children. In other way all the skills in KSSR curriculum is able to produce students whom can face the global challenge in future. Both curriculums use textbook as their primary source of knowledge guidance in classrooms as it provides the standard content and learning for the students. The KSSR subjects are slightly different but attractive and at the same time, interactive for the students. Since Language Arts is introduced to this curriculum, I believe it provides an alternative for the teachers to actually come up with various ideas to convey a meaningful lesson in a way which all the students enjoy. This leads to student- centred lessons where activities such as songs, story -

telling, role-play and even some language games for the students to learn the subjects by heart. It was very clear that a very radical increase in learning subjects using all the methods above to provide an efficient lesson for students. This is why I believe with a curriculum like KSSR, it will help the students to actually learn the subjects as natural as it can be and also for enjoyment purpose. The noticeable change would be the elevation from 3M as in Mengira (Arithmetic), Membaca (Reading) and Menulis (Writing) to 4M by maintaining the 3M but adding one more, Menaakul (Reflection) to it. I honestly believe that this extra component actually helps to build a positive minded student since he or she can reflect on the potentials and works on it to be successful. This is a good thing because not everyone has the chance to realize their potentials and end up making more wrong decisions than they actually should. The change in KSSR from KBSR is the assessment and the amount of exposure one student gets out from their syllabus. KBSR is very much examoriented where the students are assessed formatively according to their academic performance in examinations meanwhile KSSR is a combination of both formative and summative assessment where the teacher will assess more on development of skills and it is done more individually. I think this is a drastic change in our education system. I believe with KSSR being implemented students will have more chances to succeed as they can develop many skills and assessed accordingly to their achievement. Furthermore, the amount of exposure that the students get from lessons such as Science, Technology and Humanity for a better understanding is unlimited. To sum up, as a future educator who is going to teach the students according to KSSR, I believe that KSSR is a practical solution than KBSR in order to produce students who are balance with all the skills. I think the KSSR curriculum system will help to drill the students to prepare themselves to achieve their dreams.