56,000 sign up for college entrance test
56,000 sign up for college entrance test
JAKARTA (JP): Through Thursday 56,000 students had applied for
the state university entrance test (UMPTN) in Jakarta's Region A,
Minister of Education and Culture Wardiman Djojonegoro announced
Friday.
Wardiman believes the number will increase before the June 17
deadline.
Earlier, the rector of the University of Indonesia, M.K.
Tadjudin, said the participants from the greater Jakarta area are
projected to increase to 75,680 this year from last year's
68,091.
The UMPTN organizing committee has allocated 50 seats for
blind participants. Soesmalijah Soewondo, who led UMPTN's
coordinating committee for Jakarta, told The Jakarta Post that
the committee has prepared 23 Braille examination sheets for
blind participants.
UMPTN is managed and supervised by the Ministry of Education
and Culture. As Indonesia's most prestigious exam, it is designed
to select outstanding high school graduates throughout the
country for entry to 45 state universities.
For the last three years approximately 450,000 students have
taken the test. They have competed for around 60,000 seats in the
state universities.
Wardiman visited the secretariat of the Jakarta UMPTN office
where the braille exam sheets are produced. The minister admitted
that inadequate data on the number of blind students remains an
obstacle to the effort to meet demand for the special sheets.
Also on Friday, Wardiman visited the Panglima Besar Sudirman
integrated high school, a high school were disabled children
learn alongside other students.
During his visit, he said that the presence of integrated
schools in Jakarta is expected to assist the ministry's nine-year
compulsory education program because the disabled children, who
make up three percent of school-age children, are also entitled
to proper education.
"With the support of the private sector and integrated
schools, the time before the realization of the nine-year program
could be shortened from 15 years to 10 years," he said.
Jakarta has 14 integrated schools with 117 students.
Countrywide, there are 258 such schools with 546 students.
At the Panglima Besar Sudirman high school, Wardiman also
inspected the proceedings of a UMPTN preliminary test by 13 blind
students using the Braille examination sheets. The students came
from Jakarta, Bandung in West Java and Yogyakarta.
Wardiman pointed out that the government's big step in
providing the Braille sheets should be followed by the provision
of good Braille books and Braille teachers.
He also acknowledged that the government's step will encourage
disabled children, especially the blind, to enter high school and
take the UMPTN test.
"The impact will not be felt now, but in about two or three
years to come, the number of disabled participants will jump
significantly," he said. (03)