A Personal Critical Review on KSSR/KBSR

It never strikes me even once that being a teacher especially an English Language
teacher would require more inner strength than I imagined besides being an Economic teacher.
I embraced the idea of being an English Language teacher with simple concept. Speak and
master the language and that would be enough for me to survive in this profession. The moment
of truth hits me when I actually immersed myself to be a good English Language teacher by
learning by heart to be one. The period of preparation is actually a dramatic one for me because
of the transition from Kurikulum Bersepadu Sekolah Rendah (KBSR) to Kurikulum Standard
Sekolah Rendah (KSSR) for the elementary school. 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 the drastic change between KBSR and KSSR other than the different
acronyms? KBSR being the pioneer for many trials that the National Education Board wanted to
perform on Malaysian students. KBSR was more about integrating all the skills especially in
English Language Teaching (ELT) classrooms where the language skills such as Speaking,
Writing, Listening and Reading are emphasized at a very basic level. I, myself experienced the
curriculum where it practically more about working on language across curriculum objective.
This refers to having the national language, Malay Language used as the medium of instruction
for all the subjects except English Language subject. Now, Im going to touch on KBSR and
KSSR in the aspect of English Language alone. 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 effectively communication
accordingly. Being this as the aim for KSSR, it was implemented in early 2011 with new-toMalaysians approach, the Modular based syllabus. For primary school, the syllabus of English
Language is divided into two main components, Level 1 compromising Year One, Year Two and
Year Three and Level 2 compromising Year Four, Year Five and Year Six. Four modules such as
Listening and Speaking (Module 1), Reading (Module Two), Writing (Module Three) and
Language Arts (Module Four) will be taught in Level 1 whereas grammar will be added to these
four modules in Level 2. 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
method of English Language teaching might be 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-centered lessons
where activities such as forum, debate, role-play and even some language games for example
Scrabble and Boggle for the students to learn the language by heart. I personally experienced a
very radical increase in learning English Language when my teacher actually used all the
methods above to provide an efficient lesson for us. This is why I believe with a curriculum like
KSSR, it will help the students to actually learn the language 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 differences
between these both systems can be shown here:

KSSR
Curriculum design is based on 6 areas:

KBSR
Curriculum design is based on 3 areas:

Communication

Communication

Spiritual, Attitude and Values

Man and his environment

Humanitarian

Self-development of the individual

Physical and Aesthetical Development

Science and Technology
Curriculum Materials

Curriculum Materials

Curriculum Standard documents

Design of the Curriculum:

Study syllabus
Design of the Curriculum:

Modular
The elements of creativity and innovation,

Linear
Elements of analytical and creative

entrepreneurial, information technology

thinking skills

and communication

Focus:

Focus:

4M (Reading, Writing, Counting and

3M (Reading, Writing and Counting)

Reasoning)
The revolutionary change in KSSR from KBSR is the assessment and the amount of
exposure one student gets out from their syllabus. KBSR is very much exam-oriented approach
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.
This is a great feature of KSSR, I would say. I believe with KSSR being implemented students
will have more chances to succeed as they can develop many skills and assessed accordingly
to land themselves in a satisfaction side of life. The amount of exposure I meant here was the
themes that are integrated in lessons such as Science, Technology and Humanity for a better
understanding. Based on what I learned in Teaching Methods, this part of the curriculum is more
or less like the Content-Based Approach where the teacher focuses on the target language and
how it is used effectively to convey the lesson using the bigger scale content. For example,
during my Form 4 and 5 I have to take on the English in Science and Technology subject where
I have to learn the scientific terms and how they are used in academic writing and at the same
time, being exposed to a completely different field of study.
To put it in a nutshell, as a teacher, I believe that KSSR is a practical solution than KBSR
(but doesnt mean that KBSR is not effective) in order to produce all-rounders that excel in
various fields without much hassle. Dreams will be more realistic and the curriculum itself will
help to drill the students to prepare themselves to achieve their dreams.