PUTRAJAYA, MALAYSIA: The aptitude test which Year Six pupils sat for as part of the Primary School Achievement Test (UPSR) showed that their thinking skills were better than their problem-solving and decision-making abilities.

Education director-general Tan Sri Alimuddin Mohd Dom said the aptitude test was introduced to discover pupils' potential in terms of their thinking, problem-solving and decision-making skills, as well as their interests.

"Pupils' thinking, problem-solving and decision-making skills were classified according to four bands from one to four, with four being the highest," he told reporters when announcing the analysis of the UPSR 2009 results yesterday.

Alimuddin said pupils' interest in academic, technical and vocational, art, sports, as well as cultural and social areas were ranked from one to five, with one showing their main inclination.

"Based on the data from the Aptitude Test, we found that 175,101 pupils or 34.34% obtained a band four in their thinking skills while only 29,084 or 5.7% achieved a similar band in problem-solving and decision-making skills," he said.

Alimuddin said this showed that pupils should be given more training in these areas.

On pupils' interest according to the test, he said the results showed that their main inclination was in the academic area at 39.21% followed by technical and vocational (29.25%), art (19.26%) cultural and social (9.72%) and sports fields (2.57%).

He said all Year Six pupils had to sit for the aptitude test on the last day of the UPSR.

The one-and-a-half hour test had 60 multiple choice questions. The grade they received was listed in the pupils' UPSR results slip.