After UPSR in SJKC

We often find posts about UPSR preparation but no one shares what happens after UPSR. Today, I'm going to share what happens after UPSR to provide some cheer to the hardworking kids and parents preparing for UPSR 2017.

Typically, UPSR takes place in early September. It used to be over in just 3 days, now it is 4-5 days, an extra day for SJKC and SJKT students. Imagine all that studying and preparation over in a couple of days. Parents have to make sure kids are well enough and don't fall sick during that period. That itself is a form of stress.

In many SJKC, UPSR preparation starts in Year 4. That's when you have extra after school compulsory tuition (which you can choose to opt out of). There will be lots of practice doing UPSR exam papers in workbooks that have titles like "pra-UPSR", "Score A" (it used to be Score 7As, now its Score 8As). Preparation heats up in Year 6 when there will be motivational talks by the school with parents in attendance. Later on, there will be seminars and motivational camps in school just for the kids. By year 6, it may be harder to opt out of the compulsory extra school tuition after school hours including Saturdays. 

Then BOOM! the UPSR is over in a little over a week. After that kids continue to attend school till around end of November when they break for the year-end. So what do these kids do from second week of September till the last week of November? That's about 2 1/2 months. Do they go to school to play or ponteng classes?

This is what my kid did after UPSR.

1. Take part in sports competition. The school organized inter-class competition for games and sports like badminton, football and basketball. Anyone can register and compete for fun.
2. Take part in concert/competition. The kids were encouraged to take part in concert/competition by performing musical instruments, singing or dancing and acting. 
3. Prepare for school graduation concert. They kids practiced for their graduation concert. Everyone has a role to play including singing in a choir made out of the whole P6 students.
4. Take part in drawing or art competition.
5. Organized a school fun fair. The kids got together in teams to run games/competition stalls or sold stuff. They were to treat it like a business so a lot of planning is involved including calculating how much money they have to come up with for prizes and gifts and the returns from what they will charge for games at their stall. They had to go from class to class to present and garner interest and participation in their stalls. The kids love this and many start planning what stall or games they want to run even from the start of the year. They have to take care of their stall on fun fair day and after that they calculated to see which team made the most money. This is done to encourage enterprise skills. 
6. The kids went on organized school trips with their other P6 school mates.
7. Of course, they also "lepak" in class when teacher was busy or not looking by having someone guarding the door while they played music videos when teacher was away (in other words, they had fun just like any school going kids)
8. Oh and there are still tests for other subjects like RBT (Rekabentuk dan teknologi), TMK (Teknologi Maklumat dan Komunikasi) and other subjects that were not tested during UPSR.
9. They also started studying some Form 1 work 

They had so much fun! That made up for all that time when they could not attend their PE or gym or art classes because they had to study. Many parents complain about the fact that gym classes are replaced by academic lessons but many fail to mention this part. In short, after UPSR, they did and learned everything they could not earlier during the year, sports, finer arts like drawing, music, singing, dancing, speech and drama, enterprise sklls, presentation skills, performing and just having fun plus they did not forget their studies.

Yes, SJKC is very much focused on academics. Yes, the kids work really hard for UPSR but then hey, they also play very hard afterwards.

So to all parents with kids sitting for UPSR this year, ie 2017. Encourage your kids to work hard now and ask them to hang on there for just a few months more. After that they can do and learn all the things that they miss out on. They will make up for it. Oh yes and pray there are no leaks in the papers. My other kid was unfortunate to have this special time cut short by a whole month due to paper leaks a couple of years ago.

Good luck!  All the best for UPSR 2017 students.