Pre-college courses thrive in Yogyakarta

By Bambang M.

YOGYAKARTA (JP): It is common knowledge that senior high school graduates, who are generally not ready to face the state university entrance examination, are targets for the lucrative pre-university tutoring business.

Participants in such courses are intensively drilled to correctly answer mock state university entrance examinations -- usually in a multiple choice format -- in the shortest time possible. Of course, the fee, which depends on the length of the course, is up there at the hundreds of thousands of rupiah level.

These courses, which began to spring up in major cities across the country in the late 1970s, are in great demand because a lot of senior high school graduates hope to be accepted into a state university so as to guarantee themselves a generally good tertiary education. So, while getting accepted into a state university is very difficult, parents realize that once their children are there they won't have to dig too deep into their pockets.

"Entrance examination drills are very helpful for us senior high school graduates," said long-haired Yohanes Sanaha Purba, who just completed his studies at the De Britto Catholic High School this year.

He has now joined a one-year program offered by the Bulaksumur Association (BSA), for which he paid a total of Rp 400,000 (US$44).

The son of a lecturer said that the most helpful subject was basic math, which he had never learned at school. In the recent state university entrance examination many questions were based on basic math. Another advantage of taking a course at BSA was that he was intensively drilled to answer a lot of questions in a short period of time, he added.

Concurring with Yohanes, the headmaster of the SMUN 3 state senior high school in Yogyakarta, Nursisto, stressed that tutoring was quite useful in helping students get a good grasp of the subjects they were studying.

Meanwhile, the deputy principal of Yogyakarta's SMUN 1 state senior high school, Sidi Hartono, said that tutoring could boost the students' desire to study.

Despite the advantages of tutoring, it is quite appropriate to enquire why it is necessary at all. One may rightfully suspect that the students generally do not get enough from school to enable them to successfully sit the university entrance examination.

An educational observer and practitioner, Darmaningtyas, said he believed that courses providing tutoring for pre-university tests were needed because of the generally poor educational system applied in schools.

He said that one reason for this poor system was the low qualifications of the teachers. Understandably, the quality of the students' education was also low, said Darmaningtyas, the author of Education during and after crisis: Evaluation of education during a crisis.

On this score, Adam Primaskara, general manager of Primagama -- an institution providing pre-university tutoring with 57 branches in 25 provinces across the country -- said that such courses provided things that schools failed to give to their students.

"Not every school teaches program in the national curriculum properly to the students. In the regions especially, teachers are only concerned with reaching the teaching targets," said Adam.

So, as Yudi S. Hono, director of BSA, said, these pre- university courses have been established to promote students' academic capabilities.

Sidi agreed Adam's opinion saying schools generally dealt with concept and seemed to forget to teach the students how to solve problems. "We only give the students what they should have got at school."

Improve curriculum

The rector of Yogyakarta State University, Suyanto, writing in Reflections on and reform of education in Indonesia entering the second millennium", a book he co-authored with Jihad Hisyam, said the curriculum in general senior secondary schools tended to impart many things to the students on a very superficial level.

There is a tendency for students only to receive knowledge and comprehension, but they are not taught the abilities to analyze, synthesize and evaluate things. As a result, senior secondary school leavers will generally find it difficult to answer problems in the state university entrance examination.

A closer study of this will show that generally senior secondary school leavers feel the need to join pre-university courses prior to taking the university entrance test because they need to be drilled to answer problems quickly and correctly, something that they have never been trained to do in the schools.

It is understandable, therefore, that the participants in pre- university courses comprise not only mediocre students but also students from respected schools.

In Yogyakarta, for example, many students from good schools join these courses. A teacher at De Britto senior high school, who requested anonymity, said that many of the third graders in his school joined pre-university courses.

In this regard, Sidi Hartono said that about half of the 240 third graders in his school had also joined such courses, while Nursisto claimed that about 70 percent of the third graders in his school availed of pre-university tutoring outside the school.

While some students may really need pre-university courses, others join the courses simply because they have been persuaded to do so by aggressive advertising. Many senior high school graduates believe that joining a pre-university course is essential. "If we don't join this course, it's sort of like something is missing," said Sahana.

He said that some students joined these courses only for the prestige involved, or simply to find a new girlfriend.

The fact that many students from respected senior high schools join pre-university courses is cause for concern, said Darmaningtyas, adding that if this trend continued, it would mean that the schools would become subordinate to the courses, rather than the other way around.

Therefore, he proposed that the government improve the school curriculum. Schools must give ample room and time for logical explorations on the part of the students. Besides, "We must immediately return to Law No. 4/1950 on national education and teaching as this provided greater autonomy and diversity in education," he added.