Top performer does even better

WHEN Mr Noor Isham Sanif became principal of Madrasah Al-Irsyad Al-Islamiah in 2009, it was already the top-performing Islamic school.

Still, the 48-year-old former vice-principal of Princess Elizabeth Primary School started applying strategies he had learnt from mainstream schools at the madrasah. Six years on, his efforts have paid off.

The Primary 1 cohort when Mr Noor joined the school received its Primary School Leaving Examination (PSLE) results two weeks ago, producing the best showing by a madrasah. Among them is Aisyah Nurul Izza, 12, who scored a record-breaking 269 – the highest aggregate score by a madrasah pupil. Overall, 98.4 per cent of 311 madrasah pupils who sat the PSLE qualified for secondary schools, up from 89.3 per cent last year.

The leading nine pupils from Al-Irsyad were also top across the four madrasahs that offer the primary school syllabus. The other three are Al-Maarif, Wak Tanjong and Alsagoff. A heartened Mr Noor said: “It is a lot of hard work. We cannot stop trying and, as the principal, I have to walk the talk.” And so he did. A maths teacher by training, he stayed back a few days a week to coach weaker pupils in the subject. “When the principal talks to pupils face to face, they will feel they are important too,” he said.

The pupils who often said they were unable to complete the maths paper in time got stopwatches to time themselves. “Actually, all of them can do the sums within one minute, but they are not pushing themselves,” he said. Mr Noor made the teachers specialise in certain areas. “In the past, (those) teaching Primary 4 may also teach Secondary 4, but we saw that that doesn’t work,” said Mr Noor.