Day +398 : How naive we were! Precious lesson learned. (1)

I am fine today.

I go to Kementerian Pendidikan Malaysia (Education Ministry of Malaysia) at Putrajaya this morning to submit two appeal letters to Deputy Education Minister, Y.B. Dato’ Hon Choon Kim. The appeal is for two of my nieces who applied for KPLSPM (Kursus Perguruan Lepasan SPM), a post SPM teacher training program, but failed to gain entry into the program.

One of the nieces came here from Sarawak to be a temporary teacher in the beginning of the year after her Form 6 study. She is now studying computer science in UTEM. She applied for KPLSPM, majoring in Bahasa Cina and Music Education. Though she scored A2 in Bahasa Cina and achieved grade 8 in piano performance certification, she failed to enter the program.

The other niece is the daughter of my third sister – the one who donated her stem cells to me. She applied KPLSPM, majoring in in Bahasa Melayu and Pendidikan Jasmani(Physical Education). She scored 3B in Bahasa Melayu and had represented Sarawak in national level basketball competition a few years ago. Unfortunately, though she was active in sport, she still failed to enter the program. Her father (my brother-in-law) teased her regularly, questioning her the advantages of spending so much time in basketball, so they quarrel very often :-( She wishes to join the program so much that very often she dreams that she is accepted into the program.

After they knew that they failed the interview, they appealed online immediately. But unfortunately, they failed the appeal too. This means there is no way for them to enter the program this year.

Not long after they appealed online, I called the Bahagian Pendidikan Perguruan (BPG) to see if we can submit further documents to them to support the online appeal . The staff there asked for the IC numbers of my nieces and asked me not to do anything but to wait for the appeal result. We thought that since they took the IC numbers, they must be doing something that would increase the chance of success for the appeal. But unfortunately, the result proved otherwise.

To be continued and see you next post :-)