Beyond exams: the lessons we remember long after school

2026-03-15 - 23:24

Education in Malaysia still places emphasis on grades, rankings, and examination results. These measures matter, but they do not capture everything that shapes a young person’s development. Conversations around student wellbeing, emotional resilience and psychological safety are beginning to enter the education space, reminding us that learning is not only about information but also about identity and confidence. Lulu’s song in the film “To Sir, With Love” continues to resonate. She sings about a teacher who taught her “right from wrong, and weak from strong”. In the film, an engineer reluctantly becomes a teacher in a difficult London school. The students are labelled unteachable. What makes “Sir” memorable is not strict discipline or academic brilliance, but respect. Instead of treating students as problems to control, he treats them as young adults capable of responsibility. The students address him as “Sir”, and in return he calls them “Mr” or “Miss”. A small shift in language, yet a powerful one. Dignity changes the atmosphere of the classroom. I am reminded of the final journey of a Malaysian primary school teacher and cricket coach who had spent decades in our government schools. Hundreds of his former students and their families came to pay their respects. They were no longer young boys in uniforms. They were professionals, parents and community leaders. At the funeral, the stories told were not about exam results, but about a man who knew when to joke with his students and when to be firm. A man who, despite suffering severe burns in an unfortunate accident at home years earlier, returned to the field and continued coaching his boys. They remembered the life advice after cricket matches, and the belief he had in boys who didn’t often believe in themselves. Cricket, the gentleman’s game, became his way of teaching discipline, resilience, and character. Educational psychology recognises that learning is deeply relational. Students thrive when classrooms allow questions, mistakes, and dialogue without fear. Supportive student-teacher relationships strengthen engagement, motivation, and the confidence to try again after failure. And most of these lessons that students receive are never written into a syllabus, they rarely appear in textbooks but stay long after school is over. Many of our schools have started to run peer-support and wellbeing activities as complementary student development. However, education debates in Malaysia still tend to focus mainly on curriculum and assessment reform, even though schools shape far more than academic outcomes. As teachers guide students through the emotional and social realities of growing up, there is opportunity to recognise and support this role more intentionally — by strengthening mentorship, student wellbeing and emotional literacy as part of the culture of schools, not just extracurricular activities. Because when textbooks finally close, the teachers shaping our children today are also shaping the Malaysia of tomorrow. The views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect those of FMT.