To whom it may concern in Ministry of Education, 

With the recent completion of ASMO 2018 in UMS, we would like to bring to your attention on the discrepancies and the many mismanagement of ASMO organiser that many of us (parents and teachers) had witnessed and experienced first hand. This has indeed affected our reputation and put Malaysia in bad shape. Listed below are some of the key scenarios happened which clearly shown the incapability of the current ASMO committee.

1. Poor Management of the Event Resulted in Safety Concern and Impacted Performance of Malaysian Participants

We were very disappointed and frustrated with the bad planning of the organiser in terms of flight and accommodation arrangement, this is totally against what the organiser claimed that they’re experienced and will put kids safety as the utmost priority.

Everything was in a mess since the moment the participants arrived at their allocated apartment in Kota Kinabalu.  There was no proper procedure to record who has arrived and checked in. The inefficient manual procedure coupled with insufficient manpower in handling the registration on arrival has resulted in time wasted and caused emotional stress among the participants especially for those of them who were being on the late evening flight from the Peninsular Malaysia.  By the time participants were settled and showered, it was already close to midnight, most of them did not get a good proper rest before the competition take place the next morning.

We understand the intention of separating the participants from parents/guardian is to encourage kids to interact with other peers from different schools, but this could have been done more professionally if pre planning work was being carried out using QR code to organise every information into a computerised system, and ensuring the selected hotel able to fulfill the basic safety requirements.We were amused with the reply from ASMO committee that they were not aware of the hotel only provide 1 key for each unit, this shows they’re just trying to wash their hands away!

Another issue worth highlighting that prove the mismanagement of this event was parents/guardian of the participants were begged to provide copy of IC at the very last minute upon arrival in KK to avoid penalty from hotel, we guess the management didn’t inform hotel of the late check in when they themselves booked a late flight for us.

Parents from local and other countries had to take a 5 minute walk with our luggages to our hotel for check in after settled our kids at their apartment. We did the same thing when check out, as organiser claimed that buses are not allowed to stop at the hotel we stayed in. This has caused inconvenience among parents/guardian who were there because of the organiser’s requirement for participants to be accompanied by either their parents or guardian.   

2. Transportation from Children’s Accommodation to Competition Venue was Not Properly Planned and Impacted the Mood of the Participants on Competition Day

We were disappointed that the organiser had failed to make proper arrangement for buses to send participants to the competitive venue at the agreed time and for the respective team leader to guide and brief participants ahead of the competition.  No proper prior communication was given on the allocation of buses and the delay subsequently had caused participants and their parents/guardians to wait under the hot sun for at least 30 minutes on the day of the competition for the bus. We strongly believe that such situation had adversely impacted the mood of the participants and certainly affected their performance of the competition.

3. Competition Rules & Regulations Not Properly Communicated and Resulted in Participants Being Penalised by Marks Deduction

We were shocked to know that majority of participants were being penalised by having their marks deducted due to no working steps even if the answer is correct. ASMO organiser claimed that they have briefed the participants to provide working steps but when we asked the participants, they were being informed to write out working steps to help get some marks if the answer is wrong. But if the answer is correct, they can get full mark even without working steps. Hence they were being encouraged to write the working steps but is not compulsory.

Participants should be clearly briefed on the answering requirements, supported with clear instructions written on the question paper that workings is compulsory. Penalizing the participants due to no workings is very unfair as they were not clearly briefed on the requirements. Standard answering method for short questions in any olympiad maths competitions is providing only correct answers is sufficient, should no specific instruction that workings are required.

In any international competitions, it is of utmost importance for the management to maintain impartial, transparent and responsive. However, a simple request of providing competition rules and regulations in advance was ignored. Of which all other competitions published on their brochures and websites when they are open for registration. This shows that many decisions were actually taken in haste and not properly thought of.  As a result of this communication issue, instructions were not properly understood by each and every participants, resulted in unnecessary marks deduction that caused them to lose the award that they should rightfully deserved.

4. Judging System/Marking Scheme Not Properly Communicated Resulted in Most of Malaysian Participants Failed to Qualify for the Award/Higher Award & Negligence in Handling Award Winners List

Many parents and teachers were shocked to know that the usual top scorers at national and international level were only awarded bronze at the best, some even not getting any medal. It is very demoralising for those high achievers who have expected a much better result since the questions were deemed easy without much difficulties to solve it. We have requested ASMO organiser to release the answer sheets so that participants can find out if they are really not up to the regional standard or just missed by the different rules which was not being communicated clearly. However, we did not receive any positive response from organiser despite many requests posted on the WhatsApp group chat.

Another discrepancy that we wish to highlight is the negligence on the part of ASMO organiser in omitting a Malaysian Gold award winner from the award recipient lists on the award ceremony day which was only discovered 2 days later.  We find that such negligence action of the ASMO organiser is totally unacceptable given the emotional distraught suffered by this young Malaysian participant who was confident of winning an award and with no parents accompanying, left the ceremony without any award!  Such a careless behaviour of the organiser could ruin the reputation of Malaysia as the host country. 

5. Performance by Malaysian Participants on the Cultural Night Not Well Prepared and Resulted in Embarrassment to Malaysia as the Host Country

As a host country, we should have the best performance during the cultural night to amaze the participants from other countries, but it went totally opposite! We can see the effort and passion put in from other countries who were well prepared with full costume, but for Malaysia as the host, no prior planning and training to do the performance, despite parents asked in the WhatsApp group chat a week before the event, as some were eager to help out when we got to know about the performance session from the itinerary shared.

A lot of other details were not well thought and executed, such as table seating arrangement which the front middle tables were given to the temporary event helpers while the participants from other countries were all being seated at the back and side.

We saw many mistakes in the program booklet given during award ceremony. A lot of participants’ names were being left out. Thailand was being spelt as Tailand. This is such an awful shame to MOE and Malaysia! A mistake not suppose to be made by a professional event organiser.

All the embarrassing discrepancies and unprofessional showings have affected not only us Malaysians but also others from the overseas. It is even worse when the organiser is defensive and not open to accept criticism, dare not have the courage and integrity to own up to any mistakes done, always put blame on others and victimise himself. Hence for the interest of Science and Maths Olympiad in Malaysia, we strongly feel that the current ASMO committee is not capable to organise any regional competitions on behalf of MOE and should be changed immediately.

Yours sincerely,

Parents & Teachers of ASMO 2018 Participants