Analysing international baccalaureate students' academic performance at Kolej Mara, Banting

Abstract

The academic performance of Malaysian students has recently been in the spotlight when it was revealed that our high schoolers had performed dismally in recent major international benchmarking studies. Malaysian students were not only ranked below the global average, but they also appear to be performing worse in Mathematics, Science and Reading Literacy compared the previous assessments. This has raised alarm among not only educational policy makers and academicians, but also other stakeholders who are directly or indirectly affected by the success or failure of the educational system. This study aims at empirically analysing the academic performance of students enrolled in the International Baccalaureate (IB) Diploma Program at Kolej MARA Banting (KMB) over a span of 23 years. It attempts to identify whether there is a similar declining trend as reported by PISA and TIMSS, and identify factors that accounted for the students’ performance. Students’ IB results from 1993 to 2016 sourced from KMB database were analysed for trend and the strength of the relationship of subjects that contributed to the total points of the IB examination for two main programs offered at the college. Finally, future performance for the next three years was forecasted using time series analysis using ARIMA (1,0,0). The Mann Kendall Test confirmed existence of a downward trend in the students’ results. Correlational analyses found that high level subjects comprising of the High Level Chemistry, High Level Physics, High Level Biology and High Level Mathematics are highly correlated to IB examination results. This is accentuated further after a policy change in 2009 when the program for pre-Medical students opted for Standard Level Mathematics, instead of High Level Mathematics it used to offer. It is anticipated that the findings of this study will provide the relevant authorities with invaluable information with a view of instituting corrective measures.