Culture and Education Minister Anies Baswedan has enlisted the help of the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) to combat graft and promote transparency in schools.

On Tuesday, Anies held a meeting with the KPK prevention division, along with headmasters from 503 schools, to discuss efforts to improve integrity in the education sector.

In the meeting, Anies also briefed the KPK on the low integrity index of most schools in the country as indicated by the persistence of cheating during national exams.

'€œDuring the national exam, many education agencies, teachers and school headmasters distributed answers to their students so that the students could score well, this is something that we have to stop,'€ Anies said after the meeting at KPK headquarters in Jakarta
on Tuesday.

Anies said that the 503 schools selected to join the meeting with the KPK were those proven to have conducted the national exam with strong integrity over the past five years.

All of them received awards from President Joko '€œJokowi'€ Widodo at the State Palace on Monday.

The schools were selected based on the ministry'€™s monitoring of 80,000 state schools across the country.

The ministry conducted the selection process by measuring and identifying cheating patterns, such as percentage of students thought to have cheated, and similarities of answers between tests.

Around 65.2 percent of the 80,000 schools were judged as having very low integrity.

Anies said that his ministry had yet to sanction schools with the lowest levels of integrity. However, he would not be so lenient in coming years and assured that schools with the worst performances would be subject to shaming practices, with the names of the schools being announced in local media.

'€œThe schools'€™ authorities would then be very ashamed to find that their school had ranked the lowest in integrity and this could provide a deterrent effect,'€ Anies said.

Anies said that he was yet to officially decide what action to take in collaboration with the KPK against the worst performing schools, considering that the KPK was now undergoing a leadership change.

'€œI understand that [the new leaders] will need time to adapt [...], but I have high hopes that the KPK will be strong,'€ he said.

Meanwhile, KPK prevention deputy Pahala Nainggolan said after the meeting that the KPK would continue working with the ministry, which handles state schools, and the Religious Affairs Ministry, which controls Islamic state schools, to promote an anti-graft national curriculum.

'€œWe will propose the introduction of more comprehensive instruction on integrity in the school curriculum, such as in Bahasa Indonesia and Civic Education,'€ Pahala said.

He also said that the KPK would propose integrity training modules for teachers and headmasters. '€œWe'€™ll focus first on the subject of integrity because it'€™s still a long time until we discuss corruption with the students,'€ he added.

Pahala warned that in 20 years, the country would still be mired in corruption if no joint efforts were made to curb it. (foy)

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