Pan Asia Publications, RM28.90, ISBN 978-629-497-077-9
Education, 2025

For a long time, the only reference books a candidate for SPM Pendidikan Moral (that’s Moral Education) are their textbooks and the pretty underwhelming Revisi Sukses: Pendidikan Moral from Penerbit Ilmu Bakti from 2023.

Cut to 2025 and, surprise, Pan Asia Publications decides to grace the market with Spotlight A+ Plus: Pendidikan Moral.

Authors

The cover doesn’t state Tan Soon Chen’s credentials.

A quick online search reveals that there is a Tan Soon Chen that wrote some Math books, but I haven’t found anything to suggest that it is the same person as the author of this book.

Design

• It’s similar to the Spotlight SPM language subject books from the publisher: two or three colors per page, nothing too fancy or overwhelming.
• This is not a bad thing, however, as the book has an overall neat and clean layout that is easy to read.
• There are ample illustrations, tables, and charts to keep things interesting too.

Content

This book has the usual must-have: the all-important list of nilai murni universal and each definition that candidates need to know by heart, as well as some concept maps for the chapters.

I also like how it tries to make sense of an otherwise nonsensical subject.

• The presentation is professional, and for the most part, the author presents the content in way that doesn’t infantilize SPM candidates as much as Revisi Sukses SPM: Pendidikan Moral did.
• The practice questions do not try too hard to present dumb or outlandish situations. The suggested answers are also reasonable and more or less representative of how an actual teenager would think for the most part.

However, for the most part, SPM Pendidikan Moral is hard to study for, as it’s more of a “guess what is in the examiner’s marking scheme” game.

The paper looks easy and reasonable, but it asks questions that are by nature open ended only to undercut the whole open-ended nature by having a rigid marking scheme that rejects all opinions and values not listed in it.

As a result, one doesn’t revise for this paper like they would for other subjects. One needs to learn how to game it.

This Is the Book’s Biggest Failing

It doesn’t offer any advice on how to answer the actual SPM Pendidikan Moral paper. There is no tips and advice section, side boxes with exam tips, or spotlights on common mistakes made by other candidates.

Worse, the answers at the back all come with a clause stating that any reasonable answer is accepted, which is not the case at all as a big bulk of the actual paper only accepts the answers stated within the marking scheme. The candidate may end up thinking that the actual paper is for more sensible than it actually is!

Given that the actual SPM paper is closed, this is one subject where any help and advice on how to structure the answers or predict what to answer to best match those in the exam marking scheme would be much appreciated.

Sadly, this book doesn’t have it at all. The candidate is still on their own when it comes to answering the paper.

Conclusion

• Spotlight A+ Plus: Pendidikan Moral attempts to present the subject in a way that can be studied and revised for the SPM Pendidikan Moral paper.
• To some extent, it’s a handy reference all the same, and having it may help make the candidate feel less lost when it comes to the actual paper.
• However, it doesn’t offer much-needed tips and tricks on how to answer the questions in the actual paper, which diminishes considerably its usefulness.