T

he Culture and Elementary and Secondary Education Ministry has been closely monitoring firms responsible for printing national examination materials that will be distributed to high school and vocational high school students later this month.

Culture and Elementary and Secondary Education Minister Anies Baswedan said that the strict monitoring was to ensure the exam materials would be printed and distributed on schedule.

'€œCurrently 90.98 percent, or 11.39 million out of 12.52 million sheets for high school students, have been printed, bound and are ready for distribution. The remaining 11 percent are still being printed or prepared,'€ he told reporters over the weekend.

Anies said that 78.48 percent, or 3.17 million out of 4.04 million sheets exam materials for vocational high school students, were ready for distribution. Students of high and vocational schools are scheduled to take their national exams on April 13.

Meanwhile, printing firms so far only managed to print 8 percent of the exam materials for junior high school students, who are expected to take the test on May 4.

To enforce compliance, the ministry has installed six closed circuit television cameras in each of the 17 printing firms that won the tender for printing this year'€™s national exam materials.

Anies said that the cameras could help officials detect any problems before they became worse.

'€œIf we see something out of the ordinary on screen then we can immediately call the company to ask them what is going on,'€ he said.

The companies have also been given the order to brief ministry officials about the progress of their work twice a day.

Separately, the head of the ministry'€™s Educational Evaluation Center (Puspendik), Nizam, said that officials from the ministry had been dispatched to the printing presses to conduct daily monitoring. Nizam said that the officials would work to ensure that printing firms would not rig the printing jobs awarded to them.

'€œWe also check if the papers are legible. Sometimes we find papers on which the printing quality is compromised, so by directly sending our staff we can order the company to immediately fix problems when they arise. So we are not only checking on quantity, but also quality,'€ he said.

Nizam said the exam materials would not be shipped until March 29, except for those to far-flung provinces like Maluku and Papua.

He said before being distributed the exam materials would be stored in warehouses picked by local administrations and if indications were found that theft was possible, the materials would be housed in local police stations.

'€œThe security measures will be the same as they were in previous years, except that we hope that police officers will not be deployed at schools because that can be a little intimidating,'€ he said.