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strong>April 15, p4

The Culture and Elementary and Secondary Education Ministry has said it will use the results of its monitoring of high school and vocational school exams to measure the integrity of individual schools.

The ministry is expected to publish the index in May.

Culture and Elementary and Secondary Education Minister Anies Baswedan said Tuesday that since the national exam would no longer determine whether a student graduated, the ministry would instead focus on gauging the integrity of schools and compare the results with last year'€™s integrity index at the regency level.

Your comments:

You can have a standardized test a few times during grade one to 12, but you shouldn'€™t give everyone in the same grade the same test. You need an array of similar tests and then no one sitting side by side or front to back would have a chance of receiving the same test. If for some reason some of the questions are leaked, they wouldn'€™t apply to every test and no would know if they applied to theirs. Why do teachers conduct practice tests?

If they are teaching the curriculum, they don'€™t need a practice test. Standardized tests are more to evaluate the performance of the schools than the individual student. Students'€™ grades should have no bearing on the standardized test results. That should be based on attendance, class interaction and test scores.

X Simaging

Things seem to be going in the right direction with what the new minister is doing in the education sector.

However, I believe a very hard stance needs to be taken to stop the continuous corruption within the regional and local education offices.

Willo