Pre-college courses thrive in Yogyakarta

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.