(Kompas.com/Iwan Setiyawan)

The Jakarta administration says it has employed sufficient security measures to prevent exam questions from being leaked to students before the National Examination begins next week.

Jakarta Education Agency chief Taufik Yudhi Mulyanto said the Education and Culture Ministry has employed measures to minimize the risk of cheating as each student would randomly receive one of five different list of questions. “With only 20 students in each class during the examination, only five students in each class will be working from the same sheet of questions,” Taufik said at the City Hall on Tuesday.

Each class would be supervised by two teachers from different schools, who have not been teaching the subjects being tested at the time.

“Basically, we will swap a teacher from one school with another. No teacher will be allowed inside their own school as their students take the examination on their respective subject,” Taufik said.

Cases of cheating emerge every year, ranging from the leaking of exam questions and answer sheets, to the circulating of fake exam sheets. Students and those who are supposed to monitor the exams have been implicated in the cases.

Incidents of cheating are frequently publicized, but as the perpetrators are rarely punished, such actions are widely accepted.

The Education and Culture Ministry announced that the National Exam for senior high school students would be held from April 16 to 19. Junior high school students will sit it from April 23 to 26, and elementary students from May 7 to 9.

Jakarta Education Agency data showed that students numbering 119,943 from senior high schools, 132,906 from junior high schools and 155,026 from elementary schools would sit their final exams this year.

The ministry appointed four companies in Kudus and Semarang in Central Java, Surabaya in East Java and Riau to print the exam papers.

Exam papers for Jakarta high school students are printed in Kudus and are to be delivered to the capital before Sunday.

The documents will then be delivered to five high schools: state senior high school (SMA) 68 in Central Jakarta, SMA 13 in North Jakarta, SMA 78 in West Jakarta, SMA 70 in South Jakarta and vocational high school (SMK) 26 in East Jakarta.

From there, the documents, to be kept in locked boxes, will be sent to 27 other schools that are also functioning as distribution centers in five municipalities and one regency.

Separately, Jakarta Police spokesman Sr. Comr. Rikwanto said that personnel would be deployed to safeguard distribution and storage.

“We will help to ensure there will be no leak during the exam,” Rikwanto said, adding that police, public order officers and school security would guard the storage rooms.

Last year, the city recorded a 99.52 percent senior high school student graduation rate, higher than 98.65 percent recorded in 2010.

Final grades will be determined using both the exam results and schools’ final tests, weighted 40 percent and 60 percent respectively.

Senior high school students must pass the exam to graduate, scoring an average of more than 5.5, based on the national exam and the final school test, with 4.0 being the lowest passing grade for each subject.

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