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.