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Alhamdulillah, the ‘O’ level result is finally out and more surprises for the Malay community. First of all, for the first time in the national history, a Normal (Academic) student has managed to obtain 7 distinctions in GCE ‘O’ level examination. That result is a remarkable performance for student of Normal (Academic) stream, whom generally being stereotyped of being educationally inferior. Additionally, once more another Malay student managed to set a new national record bringing double joy to the Malay community, after the surprising PSLE milestone in 2007.

At the same time, I am very astonished by the GCE O’s achievements of some student from Madrasah. Perhaps one of the best Madrasah O level performance thus far, when 3 Madrasah students shared the national record of being the best O level private candidate, with the three of them obtaining 5 A1 and 2A2. Moreover unexpected was the result was verified by MOE (BH, January 26, 2008), this didn’t happened during my time in Madrasah. Mabruk! and Congrats! to Faiz and Faizin of Al-Irsyad and Zahida of Wak Tanjong. The joy that I feel is even more multiplied as the three of them are from the Madrasahs where I belong, Al-Irsyad and Wak Tanjong. Indeed, what was said by Faizin in BH, “Sekurang-kurangnya ini juga menunjukkan pelajar madrasah juga boleh bersaing dengan pelajar sekular” clearly reflect the desires of the Madrasah students to stand on par with their counterparts in mainstream school. This remind me of the time when I was in Madrasah, perhaps different from them, I have no desire to compete or to see myself on par with those friends from the mainstream school. I used to have an inferiority complex and always see myself and my other Madrasah friends as incompatible in relative to those students from the mainstream school. I’m not sure what resulted in us having this type of mentality, but the image and the portrayal of the Madrasah student as being academically-weak really had impacted us to subscribe to that belief of self-degrading ourselves. Perhaps this has been an ages-long self-fulfilling prophecy in Madrasah, especially when the reproduction of such image and perception were given serious attention. Even with the tremendous improvements made by the Madrasah in recent years, with Irsyad in particular recorded 70.4% of 5 O level passes in 2005, above the Malay national average of 62.8% and slightly behind national average of 80.7% (Charlene Tan et al 2007: p.117), I believe it is still not sufficient to dispel the myth about Madrasah being a problematic institution.

However, I doubt that should the priority of the Madrasah in the first place. There is no point in wanting so much to do the best for the sake of wanting to show we are the best. Instead, Madrasah should continue focusing on providing holistic education to student in shaping them with necessary skills, academically and religiously. Being the Singaporean Madrasah student, they must be adequately trained so that they can be an asset to Singapore and to the Muslim community-at-large. Madrasah student have a stake in the national interest of Singapore and thus should be included in our effort of nation-building that provide opportunities for all in this democratic state.