National average grade for SPM 2020 best in 5 years

The national average grade (GPN) for SPM 2020 candidates improved to 4.80 compared to 4.86 in 2019, the best results for the last five years despite the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, Education Minister Radzi Jidin said today.

“A smaller GPN indicates better performance,” he said in a live announcement today, adding that the SPM 2020 results continued the trend of improvement in GPN.

He said the results showed that 43 out of 83 subjects had seen an improvement in score. A total of 39 subjects saw a decline while one subject remained unchanged.

“For SPM 2020 candidates, there are five core subjects which showed improvement namely Mathematics, Science, Pendidikan Islam and Pendidikan Moral.

“Bahasa Melayu and English recorded a decrease,” he said.

He added that the gap between the SPM results at rural and urban schools also increased, from 0.44 in 2019 to 0.3 in 2020.

“The performance of candidates from urban and rural schools shows improvement, but the improvement of candidates from rural schools is higher than urban schools candidates,” he said.

Radzi also said that the percentage of candidates who are eligible to receive the SPM certificate increased by 1.96%, with 88.68% of 401,105 candidates who sat for the examination to receive the certificate, from 86.72% out of 389,498 candidates in 2019.

The first session of SPM 2020 took place from Feb 22 to March 25, while the second session took place from April 6 to 23, involving a total of 401,105 candidates.