Govt plan to abandon national exam lauded
Govt plan to abandon national exam lauded
Tertiani ZB Simanjuntak, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
The government's plan to scrap the national exams for
elementary schools (Ebtanas) has received a thumbs-up from both
teachers and education experts, pointing out that the existing
system is redundant, misleading and prone to corruption.
Noted education observer Mochtar Buchori along with an
executive from the Federation of Indonesian Independent Teachers,
Sonny Sumarsono, argued that the government's idea to entrust
each school to run its own exams will empower both the teachers
and the schools.
They said that the national exam failed to monitor the quality
of the education program and curriculum, and it was instead
turned into a cash-cow for certain unscrupulous administrators,
wherein students were forced to pay exam "fees" in order to pass
the test, enabling them to go on to junior high school.
"Ebtanas is a redundant program because the schools have the
authority to issue diplomas enough for reference to get higher
education. It has become a commodity since it creates
opportunities for bribery in order to get the passing marks.
"Moreover, such a nationalized examination reduces the
teachers' creativity in transferring knowledge because they are
forced to strictly adhere to the curriculum to be evaluated on
the exams, and basically ignoring the students' ability," Mochtar
said on Thursday.
Minister of National Education Abdul Malik Fajar revealed on
Wednesday the plan to eliminate Ebtanas for elementary schools in
relation with the nine-year compulsory education program and will
simplify the centralized exams for junior high students.
The nine-year compulsory education program, which was enacted
in 1994, for school age children between seven years old and
fifteen comprises the six-year elementary education and another
three years at junior high schools.
In the existing system, students of elementary, junior high
and high schools have to take the national exams which were
launched in 1983 in order to obtain leaving marks as their
reference to enroll with favorite schools.
The system was initially designed to be a tool to evaluate the
national education program by measuring how well the students had
memorized the nationally-mandated curriculum, some of which has
proven to be historically inaccurate, particularly the cases of
the alleged coup in 1965 and East Timor's occupation.
However, as Sonny put it, the evaluation turned out to be a
standard to measure the students' progress in classes, "where
education is evaluated based on how well the students answer the
multiple choice questions and not on other aspects such as their
experience and comprehension."