Thousands of students to retake exams
Dyah Apsari, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
Hundreds of thousands of high school students nationwide are to sit their repeat final examinations from Monday through Wednesday.
Some of the at least 20,728 students in Jakarta who failed the national final exams, whose results were announced on June 29 and those who didn't sit the exams the first time around expressed nervousness at the prospect of the upcoming tests, which will be conduced in 25 designated schools across Greater Jakarta.
Not only the students themselves, but their schools were also making extra efforts to ensure the students passed the repeats.
"We were shocked by the fact that some of our students, who normally get excellent grades, failed the tests ... Some of them were very depressed as a result," the head teacher at one private school in South Jakarta said on Saturday.
"We have tried to help them by urging their parents to understand that the children need their support at this difficult time in their lives," he added.
His school, and many others, have been providing extra lessons, particularly in mathematics and English, which tripped up many students.
According to a spokesman for the Jakarta Secondary and Higher Education Agency, Yusen Hardiman, as many as 10,000 high school and vocational high school students failed the English test, while 8,000 students failed math.
In the repeats, high school students will resit the subjects they failed out of the four compulsory subjects: Indonesian literature, English or another foreign language, mathematics and economics. Vocational high school students are required to take Indonesian literature, English and mathematics, Yusen explained.
This year, the government increased the grade required for a pass by high school students to 4.26, up from last year's 4.01, in a bid to improve the quality of high school graduates. The exams were held in June.
The number of students who failed the exams the first time around rose by almost 100 percent, with the highest failure rates being recorded in conflict-prone and geographically isolated areas.
The percentage of Jakarta students who failed this year's exams was 16.46 percent of 122,154 students registered to sit the exams the first time around. This is more than double the 7 percent of 126,213 students who failed last year's exams.
Idlo, a student at a private high school in Pondok Labu, said that he had been admitted to a private university in Serpong, Tangerang, before the test results showed that he had failed.
"Though I'm supposed to start in the university on Monday, I have to sit the repeat math test on Wednesday. Hopefully, I will pass it," he said, adding that the university still required him to submit a high school certificate.
"I don't want to spend another year in a gray and white uniform," he added.