Violations taint exams despite higher grades

Jakarta, NU Online
The 2009 national senior high school exams were tainted with several violations although the number of students who passed the exams and their grades were higher than last year, a media briefing heard Monday.

National exams for 33 senior high schools and one vocational high school were annulled due to reported procedural violations, which ranged from typos to questions leaked before exams were taken.<>

This year’s national exams were held April 20-24.

Mungin Eddy Wibowo, head of the National Education Standard Agency (BSPN), said the national results included the grades of students from schools who had to retake their exams between June 10 and 15.

Mungin said it was the best option for those students.

“It was not their fault, so they were given a chance to retake the exams,” he was quoted by The Jakarta Post as saying.

“Students who failed the exams are given two options. They can take the Package C exam, which starts tomorrow [Tuesday] or retake the national exams next year.”

The National Education Ministry has three programs called Packages A, B and C for students who failed the elementary, junior and senior high school exams respectively. Certificates from such programs are considered as equivalent qualifications to the national exams.

The ministry released the results of the national exams Monday.

Some 93.74 percent of senior high school students passed the exams, a 2.42 percent increase from last year’s 91.32 percent passing rate.

The average grade also increased from 7.21 in 2008 to 7.25 this year.

Passing rates were higher for students enrolled in private senior high schools than for those studying in public schools, with 95.13 percent or 861,539 private school students passing their exams, compared to 91.35 percent or 561,089 students from public schools.

Mungin said the inspectorate general of the ministry was still conducting investigations into exam violations.

Burhanudin Tola, head of the ministry’s educational assessment center, said procedural mistakes at the regional administration level  were responsible for the recent chaos witnessed during the national exams in several high schools.

“The ministry released the information in a database, but the data entry was carried out at the regional level,” he told the briefing.

Education expert Lodi Paat told The Jakarta Post that allowing students from schools affected with procedural mistakes to retake exams was not a fair practice.

“There were many different types of exam violations, from exam sheet leaks before the exams, to violations during the exams, where students were allowed to cheat openly, and violations after the exams, when the teachers corrected the results,” he said.

“But we cannot blame the students or the teachers. While some of the teachers perpetrated violations, others were also victims. There is a problem with exam policies.

“Some teachers want to pass all their students because the system forces them to.”

For Lodi, the national exams are not in line with the education system.

“The school should conduct the evaluation,” he said.

More than 1.5 million senior high school students took the 2009 national exams, compared with 1.44 million in 2008. (dar)