Vested interests in national exams
By Mayling Oey-Gardiner and Peter Gardiner
JAKARTA (JP): This is the time of year when millions of elementary and secondary students take the national end-of-cycle examinations known as Ebtanas.
It is also a time of year when many national, regional and local officials of the Ministry of National Education and local governments can enjoy the financial spoils of this annual ritual of holding the nation's schoolchildren to ransom.
This year, senior high school students were scheduled to sit for their exams from May 22 to 25, followed by junior high school students from May 29 to 31, and finally primary school students from June 5 to 7.
Without taking the exams, they are not allowed to graduate and without a piece of paper indicating the results, they cannot progress to the next level in the education hierarchy or apply for a job in the civil service.
These exams include all schools, both public and private. Private schools must cover the full "cost" of these exams -- in effect, their students must pay extra.
And this is true, even though many private schools conduct their own examinations or tests. Costs for state schools are supposed to be largely covered by the government budget, but in practice, student charges are still often levied.
If they don't or can't pay, they can't take the exams and they will not graduate with their classmates who do. Parents, thus, have no choice but to pay if they want their children to have a chance at further education or even simply proof of completion at their current level.
The media have recently been reporting about the amounts of money involved and also regarding those in favor of abolishing this expensive end-of-cycle hardship to civil society. The arguments are fairly straightforward. Firstly, it is a source of significant additional income contributed by schools, students and the tax-paying public.
Secondly, the exams serve very little purpose. They are defended (by the education bureaucracy) as a means of controlling possible variations in the quality of school level grading systems and, thus, as a stimulus for schools to improve their quality.
They are also defended as means to provide greater certainty in selection of students for progression to higher levels. To date, however, the validity of these suppositions has not been proven.
Exam scores appear to have little influence on graduation or school quality. And it is arguable that selection can be carried out by other, less expensive and onerous, means.
Not surprisingly, and contrary to increasing popular opinion to eliminate the Ebtanas, and considering the overall amount of money involved, the vested interests to maintain the system are very strong.
Take the example of Jakarta. Meetings about this year's Ebtanas reportedly started in February. But it was only when time was running out on May 1 that the Jakarta regional office of the above ministry submitted for local government approval the per student costs of the national exam.
These were Rp 55,650 at junior secondary level, Rp 75,100 at general senior secondary level and Rp 115,400 for vocational senior secondary schools.
They cleverly avoided requesting approval for a total budget. Primary school exams come under local government and are not dealt with here.
However, based on last year's (1998-1999) numbers of exam participants and the detailed unit costs for 1999-2000, we can arrive at a projected total cost.
By this calculation we arrive at a total figure of at least Rp 22 billion, simply to conduct final national exams for secondary students in Jakarta.
This amount covers only what has been submitted to the governor, but does not cover actual amounts that students and parents have to pay to all the various levels of government offices. This is definitely not chicken feed and clearly represents a good source of "pocket money" for those involved.
The details are also equally interesting. To conduct a final exam for some 294,000 students, the government has set up five levels of organization: 1) regional, 2) district, 3) city, 4) subdistrict, and 5) schools.
According to the officially approved budget, the regional office demands Rp 6.7 billion, the district office Rp 238 million, the city Rp 95 million and the subdistrict Rp 2 billion.
Another breakdown is also an eye-opener. The total budget for stationery, for four levels of government, excluding the amount demanded for the schools, comes to Rp 2.6 billion.
This item is to cover correspondence costs. Even more amazing is that the government committees at each level are given allowances and honorarium. Here, the total bill for Jakarta government officials is Rp 1.3 billion.
Worse still, as noted by the Private Schools Consortium, in the provincial office of the ministries there are only 12 committee members and they meet about six times to discuss the national exams.
Yet, they demand a total fee, consisting of allowances during meetings and honorarium, of about Rp 556 million. It is up to the reader to further calculate what each committee member collects -- clearly a substantial annual harvest.
Here we have looked only at Jakarta. But, it should be made clear that Jakarta is not an exception. This process is duplicated across the country. And the relative gain of officials and/or burden placed on students may well be greater elsewhere.
The Indonesian education system is a closed one with very rigid rules. Children are required to progress through the system in an orderly fashion, with promotion being determined by performance at the previous level -- be it school level, or even grades within each school. No skipping of grades is allowed.
At the end of each cycle -- for elementary school grade 6, junior high school grade 3, and for senior high school also grade 3 -- children have to take the national exam to be promoted to the next cycle.
Admission to junior high, senior high and university requires a certificate that the applicant has taken the national exam.
Inability to show a certificate indicating that a student has taken the national exam prohibits a school from accepting that student, irrespective of whether the school is public or private. Thus, neither schools nor students have the freedom to choose. They are only forced to pay and sit for the exams.
We mentioned earlier that one of the claimed objectives of the national exam is to control schools and serve as stimulus for quality improvement. Yet, look at the results for 1998-1999 (Table).
Table: Numbers of Ebtanas participants and number of graduates, average Ebtanas grade and graduation ratio for all students in Indonesia, 1998-1999
School Type Participants Graduates Average Graduation and Level Grade Ratio --------------------------------------------------------- Public --------------------------------------------------------- Junior Secondary 1,571,012 1,546,216 5.75 98%
General Senior Secondary 461,086 446,547 3.99 97%
Vocational Senior Secondary 155,440 153,555 5.09 99% --------------------------------------------------------- Private --------------------------------------------------------- Junior Secondary 775,314 768,900 5.22 99%
General Senior Secondary 351,303 344,156 3.19 98%
Vocational Senior Secondary 380,985 348,647 4.68 92% ---------------------------------------------------------
Source: based on statistics from the Ministry of Education, obtained from the Internet.
The grading of national exams is based on numbers, on a scale from 0 to 10. It should be clear from the table that average grades are relatively low (on normal report cards, 6 is usually considered a minimum passing grade).
Yet graduation rates are very high, all well in excess of 90 percent. The worst cases are among general senior high school students who managed to score on average less than 4 on Ebtanas. Yet between 97 percent and 98 percent still graduated.
Clearly, Ebtanas provides little or no control on the quality of graduates. Requiring students to sit the exam in addition to normal school testing and grading in order to graduate must, thus, be open to question.
The low scores, and questions that have been raised over just what the tests are measuring (not to mention perennial issues related to leakage and manipulation), cast doubt on its value as a screening tool for progression to higher levels in the education system.
If screening beyond grades and other school-based performance measures were required, it would be far more efficient for this to be carried out by individual schools using whatever standards they deem necessary.
For state universities, where selection is a major issue, there is already a separate entrance exam, the UMPTN, which is used as a basis for screening applicants.
Some more elite high schools even require applicants to take special aptitude tests either designed by the school or through private testing services.
Under such conditions, civil society should clearly question the value of Ebtanas. Particularly if, as we suggest, it's primary purpose is to keep the bureaucracy in pocket money and, thereby, hold children at ransom.
The writers are social science researchers on human resource development issues at the private Insan Hitawasana Sejahtera Foundation in Jakarta.