High school students feel the heat over national exams
The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
Despite strong opposition from some education experts and students, the Ministry of National Education has insisted on holding a national examination in May.
The controversial issue was argued in a city-wide English debate here on Saturday, with the motion of scrapping the exam winning out.
"I and my colleagues agree that the national examination be abolished because centralizing exams undermine the differences in the capacity of students and teachers in the country's schools," Aprillia, the first speaker of a team representing vocational high school students from across Jakarta.
During the debate, the final round of a two-day Jakarta Debating Competition co-organized by the Syarif Hidayatullah State Islamic University in Ciputat and the national education agency, Aprillia and team members Dina Eka Yuliani and Mutia Fanny Marhani opposed the final exams, while their opponents, a team of three SMAN 70 high school students, Irene Hutami, XXXX, XXXX, were in favor.
The SMAN 70 team sent its first speaker, Irene, to rebut Aprillia's argument and defend the government's policy.
However, she was unable to use the seven-minute time allocated as she was repeatedly distracted by interruptions by the other team.
"Interruption, please. How could you guarantee that there will be an improvement in students' intelligence if cases of buying answer sheets still happen?" said Mutia, the second speaker of the team opposing the policy.
Irene stopped her speech after four minutes and forty seconds and failed to clearly rebut her opponent's position.
Dina, who delivered the final conclusion of the team opposing the policy said exams would not make students smarter.
"Again, we would like to stress that the exams should be abolished because there is no guarantee it would improve the students' intellectual capacities," said the third grader of SMKN 8 vocational school.
The strong arguments of the team rejecting the policy won it the Jakarta Governor's Trophy and a Rp 7 million cash prize.
The adjudicators awarded the Vice Governor Trophy prize for Best Speaker to Andri Pratama of SMAN 70 that earned him Rp 1 million in cash.
Suharyanto, a senior official of the Jakarta Education Agency who has been developing debating skills of vocational high school students since last year, told The Jakarta Post that he was proud that the vocational high school students' capacity was equal with those of high school students.
"The result supports our drive to convince the Jakarta public that vocational schools have the same quality as general high schools," he said, adding that his team would head to Bali in June to defend the national championship title it won last year. (006)