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ducation and Culture Minister Muhammad Nuh has acknowledged that students have to learn too many subjects. Therefore, he said, the ministry was now preparing to merge five different subjects into just two main subjects.

He said that later the subjects of physics, biology and chemistry would be merged into natural science subject while the other two subjects, geography and history, would be merged into social science subject.

He said it was expected that the merger would help students to be more focused when learning the subjects so that in the end they could have a better understanding.

To date, both junior and senior high school students are obliged to learn respectively 12 and 17 subjects. By comparison, their student counterparts in Australia would have only to learn 9 to 10 subjects.

Commenting on this, Semarang State University acting rector Agus Wahyudin said that the university had decided to open a natural science major as part of its effort to comply with the ministry's new policy.

'We are right now in the middle of preparing the social science major,' he said.(dic)