Students, parents go all the way for final exams

Only God knows: High school students from SMA 68 in Salemba, Central Jakarta, become emotional during a mass prayer held by their school in anticipation of the national exam scheduled for Monday. A total of 122,139 high school students in Jakarta are expected to take the test between April 18 and April 21. JP/Wendra Ajistyatama

Spending more time studying, waking up early, seeking additional tutorial sessions and consuming food supplements, students are prepared to do anything to pass the national examinations.

National exam week will begin Monday for high school students and on April 25 for junior high school students.

Ninth-grader Fatiha Royan has spent longer hours at school with her classmates over the past six months.

Fatiha’s school, SMPN 74 State Junior High School in East Jakarta, has been holding two-hour tutoring sessions three times a week for its ninth-grade students to prepare them for the upcoming national examinations. During the sessions teachers would drill students on subjects tested in the exam, namely mathematics, Indonesian language, English and Natural Science.

In addition to attending the extra sessions, Fatiha also enrolled in a private tutoring center.

“I am doing all I can to prepare myself for exams. I don’t want to just pass the exam, I want to excel,” she told The Jakarta Post over the weekend.

Fatiha said she had also been asking for prayers from her parents, friends and relatives. “I need all the help I can get,” she said.

Students, however, are not the only ones working hard for the best results. Teachers and parents are also putting in enormous efforts.

Winarti Ningsih, a teacher at SMKN 26 vocational high school in East Jakarta, said teachers have also been absorbed in preparations for their senior students.

The vocational school held six test simulations over the past few months. “We design the simulations to allow students to adapt to the final exam difficulty. The problems in the simulations are easy at first, but become more and more difficult later on,” said Winarti.

Similar to other schools across the city, vocational schools also added additional hours to tutor students on subjects tested.

“During the after-school sessions, teachers not only provide academic mentoring, but we also offer activities to boost student spirit for the test — some sort of motivational session, if you will,” she told the Post Friday.

The English teacher said she had observed that students were also helping each other in preparing and motivating themselves. “As the exam date gets closer, you can see more and more senior students staying around the school compound. They talk in groups.”

On Friday, the last day of school before the exam for high school students, SMKN 26 held a mass prayer with their students at a mosque within the school compound.

Nurlia, 55, whose daughter, Ira Nurianti, will take the exam, said that parents also share the burden, “like our children, we are also preparing for the test.”

Nurlia said she bought multivitamins and food supplements for her daughter and paid closer attention to how her daughter spent her free time.

“My daughter likes to study in the early hours of the day, which means that I have to get up at 4 a.m to wake her up. That’s part of a parent’s responsibility,” the mother of two said.

Nurlia realized that her daughter was facing a different and probably more demanding exam than her older sibling.

The government has decided that this year’s final grades would be determined using both national exam results and schools’ final tests, the weighting of which would be 40 percent and 60 percent respectively.

With no remedial test allowed, students must pass the exam to graduate. Students must score an average of 5.5, based on their national exam and final school test scores, with 4.0 being the lowest passing grade for each subject.

A total of 122,139 high school students will take the test in Jakarta.