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.