Ministry of Basic and Secondary Education Outlines Strategies to Prevent Cheating in New Student Admission System

Jakarta (ANTARA) - The Ministry of Basic and Secondary Education (Kemendikdasmen) has outlined several strategies to prevent data input errors and cheating during the implementation of the New Student Admission System (SPMB).

Director General of Early Childhood Education, Basic Education, and Non-Formal and Informal Education at Kemendikdasmen, Gogot Suharwoto, emphasised that there is no such thing as ‘seat selling’ in SPMB and that his team is ready to deploy investigators and take action if violations occur.

“So there is no such thing as seat selling, there isn’t. If there is evidence, I will send a team. We will report it to the authorities, and it can be prosecuted,” Gogot asserted during the “Coffee with the Director General of PAUD, Basic Education, and Non-Formal Education” event in Central Jakarta on Thursday.

As a precautionary measure, he stated that the ministry has locked the new student intake quotas for each class listed on the Dapodik portal for every school since the local government set and reported them in the first technical guidelines (juknis).

Therefore, he continued, schools cannot add or reduce the new student intake quotas after the local government signs the first juknis.

“The determination of the number of student slots opened at each school is set through the local government’s juknis. Once the regional head signs it, we receive the report, and we immediately lock the school’s Dapodik page. So there is no such thing as seat selling, there isn’t,” he said.

Meanwhile, to anticipate cheating through the SPMB academic achievement pathway, Gogot said that Academic Ability Test (TKA) results can be used as validators to minimise ‘mark-up’ of grades entered into e-Reports.

Additionally, the ministry has requested educational units to fill in student grades in e-Reports each semester rather than batching them at the end of the year.

As for preventing cheating through the SPMB non-academic achievement pathway, he explained that coordination has been established with the National Achievement Centre (Puspresnas) to ensure that competition certificates submitted by students are from national or international competitions curated by Puspresnas.