Failed education system

The Jakarta Post ,  Jakarta   |  Sat, 07/01/2006 4:30 PM  |  Opinion

Munasprianto Ramli, Jakarta

The Education Ministry reports that around 9 percent of high school students failed the national final examinations. Ironically, some of them had already been admitted to universities through special admissions programs for bright and talented students. Some disappointed students took to the streets to protest the results.

What has happened to our education system? This might be leaning to the extreme, but I would have to say that our education system is dying.

Various people could be blamed for this systemic failure; for example, teachers, parents, students or the ministry. But is there an underlying problem that goes beyond the dysfunction of certain players in the system?

We could easily blame teachers, because they are right on the front lines of education. However, this does not make sense. It is actually understandable that teachers cannot deliver the curriculum as expected. They lack professional training and facilities. Moreover, teachers do not receive enough appreciation in the form of financial support and benefits from the government.

Students could also be blamed for failing to perform. But this, too, is inappropriate. Their performance depends on wide-ranging factors, including school facilities, the quality of the teachers and the content of the curriculum.

There is a long-standing gap between schools in rural areas and those in urban areas. City schools generally enjoy luxurious facilities such as libraries, science laboratories, language laboratories and computers with Internet connections, all of which are absent from schools in rural areas. Facilities at country schools are outdated or nonfunctional.

In addition to this conspicuous imbalance, our curriculum is too dense. How can we expect the children to perform well under a demanding curriculum if the school facilities are insufficient to support their study?

In my opinion, the Education Ministry should be held responsible for the failure, and the institution has no choice but to reevaluate the very aim of the national exam.

Using national exam results as the only measurement to decide whether students graduate or not seems to negate the importance of schooling. It is inconceivable and utterly unrealistic that the very success and failure of a student over three years of study is determined during a jam-packed schedule of three to four days of national examinations.

The ministry has to realize that schooling is not about getting good grades on the national exams, but rather, is about the development of students' abilities during ordinary school days. Schooling is about introducing students to the real world and helping them develop their knowledge. As a result, it's naive to judge students' success in education through the results of the national exams.

We need the final exams to assess schools' performance, for example, or to help universities recruit students. But we cannot use the final exams as the single factor that decides students' futures.

I think it is time for the Education Ministry to learn from other parts of the world. In the province of Quebec, where I pursued my master's degree, the ministry of education stipulates that the results of the national final exams account for only 20 percent of a student's total grade.

The students' grades are mostly determined by their daily performance on homework, assignments and tests. High school students graduate if their total grade on all elements equals at least 60 percent of the maximum 100. So, even if students do not perform well on the final exams, they stand a great chance of graduating if they do well on their homework, assignments and tests.

Lastly, the national final exam results serve as a warning that not only is our education system failing, but the Education Ministry and educators alike need to reform the system.

The government faces an uphill challenge to provide better schooling, teacher training, facilities and curriculum, as well as to reconsider the national exams. We will see whether the ministry itself can pass this test.

The writer is a lecturer at the School of Education and Teacher Training, Syarif Hidayatullah State Islamic Institute, Jakarta. He obtained a master's degree from the Faculty of Education, McGill University, Montreal.

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