KUALA LUMPUR: Around 9,000 students who registered for the Sijil Peperiksaan Malaysia 2021 (SPM 2021) did not sit for the exams.
The Malaysian Examination Syndicate (MES) under the Education Ministry, in a statement clarified that 407,097 candidates registered for the SPM 2021 but only 392,837 of them were taken into account in the examinations result analysis.
This, it said, was due to the registration period for first time SPM takers and whether they have fulfilled the minimum six subjects requirement.
"For analysis sake, only those who registered for the first time and took six or more subjects were included into the statistics.
"Of the total, 382,156 people or 97.28 per cent of the SPM candidates from schools and private candidates had taken the examination," it said.
The number of candidates who did not attend the examination was 9,037 people or 2.30 per cent.
MES said another 1,644 or 0.42 per cent candidates were private students who either retook the examination or those who took it privately.
"We hope this explanation will provide clarity to the numbers mentioned in an article regarding the number of candidates who did not sit for the SPM 2021 examination," it said.