High schools to set final examinations

High schools to set final examinations

Debbie A. Lubis, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

From 2003 onwards, high schools will prepare all their final
examinations minus mathematics, English and Bahasa Indonesia,
says a senior government official.

Baedhowi, secretary of the director general of primary and
secondary education at the Ministry of National Education, said
on Tuesday that the ministry would only set examinations for
mathematics, English, and Indonesian, although it would continue
to provide guidelines for schools in setting examinations for
other subjects.

Currently, junior and senior high schools set examinations in
subjects like the natural sciences, social science, mathematics,
Indonesian, English, and Pancasila and civics for their third-
grade students.

"We want to empower schools through this policy as they are
currently too dependent on the government. The guidelines are
needed as quality control for examination materials," he told The
Jakarta Post.

He added that the ministry would soon issue a decree
regulating final examinations in junior and senior high schools.

Speaking on the sidelines of a press gathering at his office,
Baedhowi said that the government still set examinations for core
subjects in a bid to ensure that national standards were adhered
to.

He said that the ministry was prioritizing such national
standards for mathematics, Indonesian and English to ensure
students' possessed logical reasoning powers, and language
accuracy and fluency.

"We need such standardized capabilities in facing this
competitive world. Besides, we also want to help lessen the
burden on school authorities," Baedhowi said.

Meanwhile, Ulya Latifah, principal of Labschool senior high
school, Jakarta, said that the government's new policy would help
the schools to assess the students' capabilities in absorbing
everything taught in class.

She said that test questions set by the government were often
not in line with what had been taught in the classroom.

"Most of the tests only examine the cognitive aspects of a
student's abilities while with the new policy, teachers will be
able to design examinations that also assess the affective and
psycho-motor aspects," Ulya said.

Ulya added that her school would establish a team comprising
reliable and qualified teachers to design the examinations for
subjects that were not covered by the government's examinations.

She said that the team would design applicative tests that
were capable of assessing the students' abilities and
competencies as required by the curriculum.

For example, to test the student's competence in natural
sciences, the test questions could require the student to answer
some analytical questions and, if necessary, perform some
technical processes to prove the answer, Ulya said.