From The NST

Shafie: We issued the certs June Ramli and Nur Aqidah Azizi PUTRAJAYA, Wed: The Higher Education Ministry today confirmed that it had issued Non-Objection Certificates (NOCs) to Arts stream students who failed their Sijil Pelajaran Malaysia examination. Pos Malaysia Minister Datuk Shafie Salleh said the students were given the NOCs to enable them to gain entry into the Crimea University in Ukraine to realise their dreams of becoming doctors. An NOC is a prerequisite for entry into any university abroad offering medical courses recognised by the Government. "According to Higher Education Department director Professor Datuk Dr Hassan Said, whom I met this morning, these students were issued with NOCs although they failed their SPM," Shafie said. "This was because they had additional certificates that carried more weight or were equivalent to the SPM," he said before chairing his post-Cabinet meeting at his ministry today. He said the "additional certificates" were among those awarded to students who passed the SPM Mathematics and Bahasa Melayu papers in July after having failed in the subjects previously. He said the issuing of NOCs in this manner was in accordance with ministry regulations. "Although they had failed their SPM examinations, they could still gain entry into universities as their other qualifications showed they were qualified." Shafie said the ministry would stop issuing NOCs for this particular university beginning Jan 1.

I find this news article very confusing. It involves Arts students being offered No Objection Certificates (NOCs) for furthering their studies in medicine in a now derecognised medical school. The Higher Education MInistry has obviously offered these letters despite knowing the proper qualifications needed to enter the medical field. A student in the Arts stream has certainly not studied the subjects necessary for qualification into medicine. If you notice, most medical schools look at subjects like Chemistry, Biology, Physics and Additional Mathematics as prerequisite subjects to pursue medicine. How can these certificates be issued when the involved students clearly were not qualified for medicine? What happened? Should someone look into the matter more intricately? Is this error repeated for other medical schools as well? Information can be scarce and the truth may never be known.