T

he Ombudsman has found that national exams administered for both junior and senior high school students in April and early May were plagued by problems, including one affecting the newly introduced computer-based examination.

The Ombudsman said many complaints were lodged about the computer-based exam, including the lack of support systems, a failure to log in to networks and problems with servers used by the Culture, Elementary and Secondary Education Ministry.

The Ombudsman received a total of 413 reports regarding the examination.

'€œReports on computer-based exams are higher in number because it is a newly introduced system,'€ Ombudsman commissioner Budi Santoso told reporters in a press briefing on Thursday.

The commission also found problems with the manual test, which ranged from cheating, complicit supervisors who allowed the cheating and exam-material leaks.

'€œIt'€™s so unfortunate these old problems continue to happen over and over again. They should have been resolved,'€ Budi said. West Kalimantan registered the largest number of complaints, with 45 reports, followed by Central Java with 36 reports and Bali with 34 reports, according to the Ombudsman.

Budi said the Ombudsman had also identified minor concerns, including supervisors preoccupied with reading newspapers and proctors thumbing through smartphones while on duty.

Culture and Elementary and Secondary Education Minister Anies Baswedan announced that the ministry would end the function of national exams as the sole determining factor of student graduation.

In spite of the decision, cheating among students was rife during this year'€™s exam.

Early in April, the ministry found that 30 packages of exam materials were leaked online, prompting the ministry to launch an investigation.

The leaks of exam materials affected students in two provinces, Yogyakarta and Aceh.

The government is considering repeating the national exam at schools where students were suspected of cheating by obtaining exam materials ahead of time.

The ministry, however, said leak was not found to be part of a systematic attempt at cheating.

The ministry'€™s head of the Educational Evaluation Center (Puspendik), Nizam, said that although the ministry had yet to conduct an evaluation of this year'€™s national exams, the computer-based exam could be deemed a success.

'€œFrom the data we have gathered so far, 99 percent of the schools that used the computer-based test approved of the method. Based on this, we hope more schools will choose the method next year,'€
he said. (saf)
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'€œReports on computer-based exams are higher in number because it is a newly introduced system.'€