21,800 students fail final examinations

21,800 students fail final examinations

The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

It was a bad day on Monday for many senior high school students
in Jakarta when they received letters sent by mail to their home
to inform them that they had failed the final examinations, held
under the new system.

The Jakarta High Education Agency said that out of the 131,151
high school students participating in the exams, more than 21,800
or 16 percent did not pass.

The figures excluded students in the neighboring cities of
Bogor, Tangerang, Bekasi and Depok.

Last year, only 3,342 students out of the total 133,600
students failed the exams conducted under the old system.

"We are evaluating the results of the final exams to find out
why so many high school students failed this year's exams," the
agency spokesman, Abdul Hamid, told The Jakarta Post.

However, the increase in the number of students who did not
pass the exams was believed to be related to the implementation
of the new national examination system.

Under the new system, students can only continue their studies
at a university level if they pass the final exams and obtain a
graduation certificate.

Unlike the old system, in order to obtain a diploma students
must get at least a 6.0 point average in all subjects in the
final exams, and each score must be above 3.0.

The students who did not pass this year's exams were mostly
those from vocational high schools (SMK), which comprised more
than 17,440 or 27 percent of the total 62,898 students.

The remaining 4,400 students who failed the exams were those
from high schools (SMU), or 6.55 percent of the total 67,253
students.

Head of the agency's high school division Thaher Husein said
the ill-fated students would still be given a second chance to
take an exam scheduled for between July 1 and July 10.

In Tangerang regency, Banten, a senior official of the local
education agency, Abdu Surahman, said that 30 percent of high
school students there had failed the final exams.

"That's because the government has imposed the new exam system
this year," he added, referring to the new policy issued earlier
this year by the Ministry of National Education.

Meanwhile, Monday's announcement of the examination results
was received peacefully in Jakarta, thanks to the move to send
the results by mail to the houses of the students, unlike
previous years, when the results were announced at schools.

This was often marred by vandalism as students gathered in
their schools, spraying paint on friends' uniforms, school walls,
and parading around the city which in most cases led to student
brawls.

Yanti, a student of state high school SMK 6 in Cibulan, South
Jakarta, said she received her results via e-mail as the school
administration urged the students to stay out of school on the
last day of school.

The move was to avoid possible violence during end of school
celebrations, she added.

"In past years, students gathered at schools to spray paint on
their uniforms and nearby buildings. They held mass rallies and
often fought with students from other schools. So now the school
uses e-mail and letters to announce the results of the final
exams," she said.