Schools test in need of improvement

Schools test in need of improvement

Simon Marcus Gower, Director, Research and Development,
Harapan Bangsa School Tangerang, Banten

The end of the academic year for schools in Indonesia is
effectively upon us and so teachers and students have been
hurriedly preparing themselves for the end of year final tests.
The goal of graduating to the next grade or even graduating from
school means that serious and even stressful cramming has been
going on in an attempt to maximize success. Unfortunately,
Indonesian schools are still prone to a period of drilling at the
end of an academic year, in which the students are aggressively
and intensively driven to be ready for their final tests.

In these intense times within schools the students'
opportunities to learn have effectively ended, all that really
remains ahead for them is a robotic and dull preparation for
final tests which may or may not be of a good quality. But what
is going on here? Students remaining passive in aggressive and
intense drilled, memorization does not seem to be in line with
progressive and developmental education; and yet the government
has been reforming the testing procedure for schools. With
apparent reform it seems odd that old-fashioned and heavy-handed
instruction techniques are still required.

Inevitably, it becomes necessary to consider the nature of the
reforms of testing that are going on. Are the reforms realistic?
Are they effective? Are they solving problems or are they in fact
compounding problems? Evidently the government has begun to go
down a path that seems to be conducive with educational reform.
The manner in which schools have been given greater autonomy in
the production of their own tests clearly indicates that schools
are being given greater trust to fulfill the education promise.

However, in giving schools the autonomy to implement and score
their own tests the government may have only gone half-way in
bringing about the necessary reform of the testing procedure.
Given greater autonomy it is a sad reality that many schools and
teachers will simply follow the formats and procedures that they
have been exposed to and used in previous years.

So even though schools have the autonomy to produce tests that
should be more focused on what the students have studied in
school and so valid, many schools are effectively incapable of
exercising and capitalizing on this autonomy.

Consequently, even though the system has been restructured,
the implementation of tests is mostly the same. In this kind of
situation it is understandable that the experiences for the
students will also remain mostly the same, and so the end of
learning occurs and undesirable drilling begins. This is
obviously a bad situation but there are remedies that can be
applied. The autonomy that schools now have should be managed and
fully capitalized on. It becomes critical that principals and
curriculum coordinators become active in promoting positive and
active use of this autonomy through more focused and learner-
centered testing formats and procedures.

There is, then, scope for schools to achieve better tests but
the government is retaining its overall control over three key
school subjects -- namely mathematics, English and Bahasa
Indonesia. This means that, although schools can enjoy freedom
across the other subjects that they teach, they are still
required to conform to the government's methods and procedures
for these three critical subjects. The government will still
issue the test materials for these subjects and score the
students' efforts.

This clearly reflects the fact that the government wishes to
retain some control over the education system being applied in
schools but this control should be about applying and maintaining
standards. Unfortunately, however, it does not seem likely that
standards are really being set and maintained by the kinds of
tests the government is putting forward.

One mathematics teacher highlights the problem when he states
that "the government tests are really too easy for my students.
We have achieved good results with our students but some remain
weak and the government tests will not show this because all of
the students will surely pass the tests." This indicates that the
school that this teacher is working in will face the problem of
having to apply a test that is not really appropriate or accurate
in determining the students' mathematical abilities. The test
simply will not reflect the teaching and learning that has gone
on at that school.

A similar predicament can been seen if we examine the kinds of
material put forward for the tests of English in schools here.
For example, a teacher of English for a junior high school
recently did a short review of English tests supplied to national
schools over recent years. He found that each of the tests was
literally filled with mistakes. Some of the mistakes were little
more than typing errors but nonetheless it would be reasonable to
expect that such tests would be well proofread.

Other mistakes that can be found in such tests cannot,
however, so easily be set aside. For example, basic grammatical
mistakes can be seen in these tests which are, in fact, the kinds
of mistakes that teachers of English consistently work to correct
in their students' use of the language. These tests are
effectively reinforcing the mistakes that the students can easily
make, but really should not be making.

Similarly, quite embarrassing spelling mistakes can be found
in such tests which leave doubt as to the competence of the test
writers. One recent test featured the use of the word "manequeen"
in two of its questions. There is no such word in the English
language. What the test writer was attempting to spell was
mannequin, but no test writer should be attempting to spell
words. Surely the use of a dictionary is a skill we can expect
from educators as well as students.

The government is clearly attempting to bring about reform of
the education system and is, specifically, targeting the
provision of test procedures. However, it is equally clear that
such reform is not easy but through proper consultations a better
and smoother path to reformation should be made possible. Reform
should be condoned and promoted but sharing the process of reform
is very important, if not essential to making reform effective
and lasting.