Officials from the National Education Ministry said Monday that the first day of the senior-high school national examination had gone smoothly, with few reports of minor mistakes in the distribution of examination papers.
The opening day in Jakarta was marked by official visits. Vice President Boediono, along with several ministers, including National Education Minister Muhammad Nuh and Religious Affairs Minister Suryadharma Ali, visited two renowned high schools in South Jakarta.
About 2.4 million senior-high school students are participating in this year’s national exams. Around 1.2 million are from private and public secular high schools, about 290,000 are from Islamic high schools and 870,000 are from vocational high schools. Of the total, 41,000 students are resitting the tests after failing to pass last year.
Boediono and the rest arrived at state high school SMA 70 at around 7 a.m., roughly one hour before the examination began.
“I have seen that there have been efforts to safeguard honesty” he said on the sidelines of the visit.
He arrived at Al-Azhar high school at around 10 a.m., when the students were having a break after the first session of the examination.
Adwin Haryo Indrawan, a student at Al-Azhar who is Finance Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati’s son, said the problems were “standard”.
Without the Vice President, the education minister later visited two nearby schools: SMA 6 and vocational school SMK 30.
Sonny Sihite, the principal of SMK 30, said two of the 173 students sitting the exam were “inclusive” students. “They cannot hear, but they sit the same tests except for the listening session in the English test,” she said.
Jakarta Governor Fauzi Bowo also made a visit to three senior high schools in West Jakarta; SMAN 2 in Jl. Gajah Mada, SMKN 53 vocational school in Jl. Mangga Besar and MAN I Islamic school in Jl. Rawa Bahagia.
During the visit, Fauzi said he had not received any reports about leaks in the national exam.
Sukemi, the ministry’s special staff for communications, said the Ministry’s hotline had received 10 reports of breaches in the secure delivery of exam papers.
Mansyur Ramli, the head of the ministry’s research and development division said the ministry was inspecting five provinces: West Sumatra, East Java, Aceh, Padang, West Sulawesi and Central Java, to confirm the reports.
In Bali, there were reports of examination papers bearing the wrong labels on their packaging, while fake copies of the question papers were allegedly distributed in Kendari, Southeast Sulawesi.
Mansyur said the national examination had so far been conducted smoothly, albeit such reports.
About 3.5 million junior-high students will sit their exams next week while 3.9 million elementary school students will sit early May. (dis)
