'National plus' schools find final exams passe

The Jakarta Post ,  Jakarta   |  Wed, 05/17/2006 12:33 PM  |  Jakarta

The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Students at schools that follow an international curriculum and encourage creative and critical thinking may find taking the national examinations particularly nerve-racking.

Partly because the exams are multiple-choice, a format they are not used to.

""We're not taught, or trained, to memorize but to analyze and solve problems,"" said twelfth grader Adinda Rachmania Dinanti from Bina Nusantara school, South Jakarta.

""I'm tired of catching up on subjects -- and the questions are still difficult. I'm so afraid I will fail it,"" she told The Jakarta Post on Tuesday, the first day of final exams.

Of 125 twelfth graders at the school, categorized as a national-plus school, 19 chose to take the national exams.

""It is a requirement to enroll in state universities,"" said the school's co-principal Gregorius Winarno, who supervises the national curriculum at the school.

Most national-plus schools allow their students to skip the national final exams. Others, like the Madania International School in Parung, oblige all students to take it.

Similar to state schools, Winarno said students were drilled in the three subjects tested in the national exams -- Math, English and Bahasa Indonesia -- for eight months before taking the exams.

""They no longer follow the international curriculum,"" he said, adding that the regular tests were harder this year, given the new policy that there would be no remedial tests for students who failed the national exams.

Last year, of six students who took the exams, four failed and had to take remedial tests. ""One of them failed the second time too,"" he said.

Winarno suggested the national exams be replaced with a better system, because ""the lack of transparency in the process of determining the results, I think, contradicts the nature of education,

""After all, at our school, the academic aspect is not the only measure for graduation"".

Djorhali, the vice principal of the senior high school at IPK Christian Bilingual School in Kebon Jeruk, West Jakarta, said the national exams should not be a requirement for graduation.

""It would be no problem if the national exams were merely taken to measure our education standard,"" he said.

Of 86 twelfth graders, only 13 are currently taking the national exams at the school.

""In 2003, more than 40 students registered to take the exams but only 15 showed up,"" he said.

Nevertheless, not all national plus schools are having trouble with the national exams.

Global Jaya school in Bintaro in southern Jakarta, which has 17 students taking the test, said it was optimistic they would all pass with flying colors.

""We have no problem with it because we're only using the international curriculum as a framework, the content is still local,"" principal Farlinawati told the Post.

According to the city education agency, 124,207 high school students took part in first day of the 2006 final exams on Tuesday. The city administration has allocated about Rp 14 billion of the city budget to hold the examinations. (01)

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