T

he failure of 380 students of Semarang’s state senior high school SMAN 3 in the 2016 State University National Entrance Selection (SNMPTN) was purely the school’s fault, said Research and Technology and Higher Education Minister Mohammad Nasir on the sidelines of observing the implementation of the SNMPTN at Diponegoro University in Semarang, Central Java, on Tuesday.

“Their failure was not because of the system in the SNMPTN registration because the SNMPTN has been going on well and about 21,000 schools registered. Schools that enrolled students at the SNMPTN were allowed to choose the curriculum used,” said Nasir.

He added that schools that registered applied full semester and semester credit unit (SKS) systems. In the SKS system, there are two models presented to the schools, the continuous and discontinuous models. The school authorities were given the chance to choose between them.

He said the problem that occurred at SMAN 3 Semarang was due to an internal problem at the school. The school applied the discontinuous model similar to that used by senior high schools in Kebumen, Kudus, Salatiga and other regencies in Central Java. However, in the implementation of the SNMPTN the other schools did not face problems like SMAN 3 Semarang.