Schools testing procedures need to be re-examined?

Schools testing procedures need to be re-examined?

Simon Marcus Gower
Principal High School
Harapan Bangsa
Tangerang, Banten

It seems like few people really like it. Teachers often
complain that it imposes too many strictures on them that force
them to teach too much too fast. More thoughtful and
independently minded students recognize that certain areas and
aspects of study prescribed by it are either of little relevance
to them or are entirely misplaced in preparing them for our
twenty-first century world.

Parents too express their dissatisfaction that their children
must follow a program of study that they can see is deficient in
a variety of ways. It cannot, then, really be seen as a surprise
that there is now much talk of and even expectation that National
Final Test (UAN) will be disregarded and assigned to become part
of the history of Indonesia's developing education sector.

The frustrations are all too apparent to all those involved in
Indonesian schools on a daily basis. Educationally and
academically UAN is consistently viewed as being circumspect. The
need for room and freedom to grow, change and improve
educationally seems to be largely constricted by the impositions
of UAN.

A local teacher of English at a National Plus school
highlighted the constricting nature of the existing system when
he described his experiences and observations of life under the
weight of UAN. He spoke of it as "both annoying and disappointing
because in our education we should be aiming to achieve higher
standards than those that are officially identified".

This teacher could directly observe and show where these
shortfalls in, and failures of, standards were occurring. In a
recent paper which teachers were obliged to administer to their
students he counted "at least twelve serious mistakes that we
have been trying to teach the students not to make."

As an example he cited the fact that the paper often included
lines such as this 'The people sees that something was wrong but
didn't do anything.' Clearly the verb 'to see' has been used in
the wrong form. This is a quite common mistake for students but
they really should not be having that kind of mistake reinforced
and thus worsened by the final test they must take for their
senior high school education.

Obviously this is a grave concern to teachers but this concern
is accentuated by the observation that they are not alone in
seeing these kinds of mistakes. For example the same teacher
mentioned above noted that he was "certain that the students
recognize these mistakes as they do the tests and it just makes
them even less motivated to do the tests and also try to do
well."

This is a sad condition, when the testers are being
legitimately doubted by those that they test. Academically and
educationally it is, then, apparent that UAN has been failing to
make the grade in certain areas. But there is also another manner
in which UAN must cause all parties to feel concern and
dissatisfaction and that, unfortunately, is a familiar one for
Indonesians and that is the notion of corruption. And perhaps
most sad of all is that this notion of corruption can be found in
the minds and thinking of Indonesian school students.

Recently a group of students that will be completing their
high school education this academic year spoke frankly about
their perceptions of UAN. "It's just no good," said one. Was this
just typical dislike of examinations? Perhaps not, because
another student took up the theme with, "Nobody accepts UAN as
being good.

If I want to go to a university in Singapore, they will just
ignore my UAN scores and insist that I do many other tests
instead." Clearly no positive sentiments here and this is most
sad because this same student is following a program that
evidently she has little or no faith in.

But laying aside these negative academic sentiments a moment,
what the next student said was disturbing for ethical reasons.
She said, with hardly a flicker of embarrassment, that if you
were to do badly in the UAN there was always a way to improve
your scores. Probed to clarify exactly what she meant she openly
said, "Well, you know, you can just give someone some money and
your scores will get better."

What a predicament we would seem to be in, then. Not only do
these students have little faith in the program of study that
they must pursue but they are also already familiar with and
accepting of the notion that should their scores in anyway prove
disappointing there is a corrupt and deceitful manner in which
they could change the situation.

This is not to say that any of those students were expressing
any direct intention to corruptly influence their scores but it
does illustrate how they evidently felt and recognized the
weakness of the system in the sense that it could and can be
readily circumvented and thus undermined.

It is widely accepted that education in Indonesia is a
developing sector, this is entirely appropriate, as all education
systems should grow with the changing times. Evidently there have
been many problems and challenges to UAN and, gradually, it seems
likely that it will be removed.

There is talk that it will be replaced with a new centralized
system of testing. Others have suggested that schools should have
greater autonomy to produce and manage their own systems of
testing. Whether the future will bring a new central testing
device, or greater consent is given for independent school
testing, is in some respects a secondary argument.

What is absolutely essential is that there is consensus that
any new system is both educationally and academically and
ethically strong. There should be no, or at least far more
limited, scope for critics to complain that the system is not
targeting appropriately high standards.