Over 7% of students fail exams

Over 7% of students fail exams

Leony Aurora, Jakarta

Envelopes with senior and vocational high school final
examination results have already been delivered -- most of the
recipients cheered their passing scores, but a few likely wept
after failing.

The final examination results for Jakarta students were better
this year, compared to last, with only 7.26 percent of the
126,259 students failing, head of Jakarta Middle and High School
Education Agency Margani Mustar told The Jakarta Post on Tuesday.

The figure is far lower than the 2003 results, in which 16
percent failed.

"People's fears that more students would fail the new passing
grade of 4.01 were unfounded," he said.

A few months ago, newspapers buzzed with debates on whether it
was wise to increase the passing grade of 3.01, on a scale
between 0 and 10, to 4.01 this year. Students must attain just
over 40 percent in each subject to pass and become eligible to
enter a university.

The Ministry of National Education drafted the national final
exams tests for three subjects -- English, Bahasa Indonesia and
Mathematics -- while the schools did the rest. This year was the
second time the government applied such a method of evaluation.

Margani said that vocational high schools students' success
rate rocketed to 93.22 percent of 59,582 students taking the test
as compared to 68.13 percent last year.

"They must have learnt from their experiences last year," he
said.

The students who failed will still get a second chance on
repeat tests to be held from July 8 to July 10. Last year, the
second-chance tests halved the number of failed students.

Preliminary evaluations revealed that private school students
performed worse than public school students, asserted Margani.
The number of private school students who failed the examinations
reached 13.01 percent, while the figure for public schools was
just 1.90 percent.

To deal with that problem, the agency plans to continue
providing contract teachers as well as more teacher training at
private schools, as it did last year.

"It is difficult to empower private schools, as there are too
many of them and their conditions differ greatly from one to the
other," said Margani.

There are currently 374 private high schools and 116 public
high schools in Jakarta, as well as 531 private vocational
schools and 58 public.

The agency said that this year, it would give new
accreditation ratings to private schools. It will assign either
A, B, C, or D -- with A being the highest -- for some 200 private
high schools to replace the previous status, which were just
listed as equal to public schools if they were given
accreditation.

"Students from schools with an A or B accreditation can
transfer to public schools," said Margani.

Last year the agency accredited 180 private high schools.