If you think you're able, and you want to study overseas (it's also possible to win scholarships from a variety of sources with A Level), I recommend a very fair, widely used, and highly recognised exam -> A Level. Not easy, even good students can struggle. But if you're good enough or work hard enough, you could end up with really good results.

It's a mix. Theory obviously (like Physics, Chemistry), facts (Chemistry and Biology), application (all three sciences). But the focus on application is relatively smaller.

A Level is unbiased. I cannot say I believe STPM is completely egalitarian. It might be, it might not be, I'm just saying I don't think it is.

Don't underestimate A Level. A lot of people overrate STPM and say it must be harder in some way. Let me tell you A Levels are not child's play. But it is quite fair in the grading and a decent student will not have problems getting As - A*s are a bit harder, you basically need to be amongst around the top 10% in the world for a subject to get that grade (for CIE).

That is a reasonable assumption. The government's behavior is not unpredictable. Although I can't say I would support something like that, given the way they've been handing out funds to SPM students before getting their 6th Form done, they would want to defend their own exam, the STPM, and no one can or should expect otherwise. At least we can say there is a private education industry.

Was not aware such a strange treaty existed. Nonetheless as I've explained previously, universities in the Commonwealth have lists on their websites of "international qualifications" and STPM will undoubtedly be among them. Since it is ABC rather than a number you just need to ensure you have a lot of the As and pluses or whatever.

You're going to try and get a scholarship. Can you afford living expenses if you only got a tuition scholarship? A Levels do not change so radically, and you can expect good results based on historical standards and predictions of your own ability to write the exams. The same definitely cannot be said for STPM, judging from my observations and of course this "change". Maybe what I'm trying to say is more people get A*A*A*A* in A Level than those who get the four highest As in STPM, and that might be why people claim STPM is so hard, but that even BBBB at STPM may not be worth BBBB at A Level (which is not worth much at all), because of differences in grading/assessment. To be sure, A Level has difficult content too, but if you outperform your cohort you'll get a good grade, regardless of where you did the exam or where you came from.

I don't think schools have a quota for STPM. That would be unreasonable. They don't prefer A Level over STPM, or IB over A Level. But having STPM makes it more difficult for them to judge you against the rest, so your overall application, your profile, needs to be fairly convincing. Because like I said, they won't necessarily look at AABB in STPM and consider that to be AABB at A Level, regardless of the difficulty of the exams (which they don't care about, there are so many GCE A Level boards and so many different types of A Level!).