THE bell curve (or grading on a curve) is a statistical method used by teachers and exam boards to assign grades based on how a pupil’s score compares to the rest of the exam taker rather than using a fixed, absolute score.
This method of assigning grades was offered as the reason why Sarawakian Threads user @clrxdaxy was able to score an ‘A’ in her Additional Mathematics paper during the 2022 SPM examinations.
This was despite her doing next to nothing to deserve that score given that she had copied the questions as answers while leaving the other half of the test paper unanswered.
This mystery of the undeserving “A” had amassed 7.6K likes, 222 comments, 204 re-posts and 205 shares at time of writing with more than one academic expert offering their considered opinion on the matter.
First off, there was a perplexed fellow Threads user in the same shoes who confessed to “not answering almost all the questions – perhaps just answered one or two questions while only did maybe half of Paper 2 yet still managed to get a B”.
Looking back, one bewildered full-time banker “would never understand” how he could score an ‘A+” for add math which he has little hope of in while he only scored a “B+” for Bahasa Malaysia which “I always got A’s throughout Form Four with even an A+ during my (SPM) trial exam”.
The ‘bell curve’ marking scheme was named a guilty party in causing such distortions in grading. It was surmised that this method would be employed to “help weaker pupils” – an insinuation that the threshold for an “A” must have been very low for that year.
Another commenter further explained it with hypothetical numbers to further illustrate how a very low mark can end up being a graded higher than expected.
It was also mentioned by an examinations system expert that the person marking the paper was not the same as the person grading it. This is regardless of the paper have been marked according to an approved marking scheme.
It was thus surmised that such delusionary grades, unfortunately, led some pupils to apply for tertiary programmes that are unsuited to their skillset.
This further affected university undergraduates who were then unable to answer psychometric test questions or write essays on scholarship application forms even though they were supposed to be “straight As” pupils.
One academic expert further explained that the grade was centralised around mean and there is a danger of a gap in quality appearing with different batches of university students in light of declining academic standards.
The contention is that only the Education Ministry (MOE) would know the true situation as it was in possession of the relevant data.
However, the original poster remarked that the grading curve still does NOT explain her “A” when she literally left most of the exam paper blank!
That is when a netizen from across the Causeway highlighted that the opposite scenario existed in Singapore.
A bell curve was also employed but too many high scorers lead to such marks being downgraded, much to the horror of the original poster who perhaps realised her situation wasn’t so bad after all.
It was also surmised that if a pupil were to opt for just one same answer for all the multiple-choice questions (without even reading them), he or she would have a very good chance of passing.
At which point, the poster cheekily retorted that it was then be “gambling instead of answering an exam paper”.
Perhaps prompted by artificial intelligence, there was even an invitation by the MOE for the poster to re-check his SPM results! Just append the results slip and enter your e-mail address and send to [emailprotected] was the simple instruction.
But the hard reality was spelled out by one pessimistic commenter who didn’t feel the need to varnish the bitter truth when it was opined that “Malaysia likely don’t have a bell curve anymore but probably a downhill curve these days”. – Oct 12, 2026
