GCE A-LEVEL IN MALAYSIA

Students today are spoilt for choices after completing their Sijil Pelajaran Malaysia (SPM) as there are many institutions offering post-SPM courses, such as GCE A-level, South Australian Matriculation (SAM), and American Degree Programs (ADP), to name a few.

Currently in Malaysia, there are two boards offering GCE A-level, mainly the Cambridge board, and the London board. For those who are unfamiliar with GCE A-Level, A-level is like Form 6 in the United Kingdom but it is currently taken in many Commonwealth countries due to its world wide recognition.

The Cambridge board A-level is available in private institutions such as Taylor’s, INTI, Nilai and KDU while the London board A-level is available in HELP and UCSI. These two boards offer similar, but not identical syllabuses and their examinations method differ from one another.

The Cambridge A-level examinations are conducted in two phrases, Advanced Subsidiary (AS) and Advanced Two (A2) respectively. For example, for Mathematics, you can have a choice to take either Mechanics 1 and Statistics 1 for AS and A2, or Mechanics 1 and Mechanics 2, or Statistics 1 and Statistics 2, depending on the course that you want to take in the future.

Meanwhile, for the London A-level, examinations are conducted in units for every subject. Students sit for 2 units for every subject at a time during their examinations and at the end of the course, grades will be based on the average mark of all the units added up together.

Both boards limit the minimum of subjects to be taken at 3, and the maximum at 4 subjects. Subjects offered at different colleges vary from one another, thus, it is up to the students to decide which college is most suitable to them.