Despite delays in the national senior high school exams in 11 out of the country's 34 provinces, almost 100 percent of high school students passed, the Education and Culture Ministry says.

The ministry announced on Thursday that 99.48 percent of senior high school and Islamic high school students, and 99.95 percent of vocational high school students succeeded in their exams.

Education and Agriculture Minister Mohammad Nuh said the percentage of the total senior high school students who passed the exams was only a slight decrease from 99.5 percent.

'This means the problems in the preparation of this year's national exams did not impede the implementation of the exams, or students' graduations,' he said.

The exams were taken by 1,581,286 senior high school and Islamic high school students; and 1,106,140 students from vocational high schools. Only 8,250 senior or Islamic high school students failed the exams, while the number of vocational high school students who failed was 601.

Data from the ministry shows that Aceh had the highest percentage of students who failed the exam with 3.11 percent of students failing, followed by Papua at 2.85 percent and Southeast Sulawesi at 2.32 percent.

Nuh said the report showed that in the 11 provinces that had their exams delayed, there were no significant differences in the percentage of students who passed the exams this year compared to last year.

In East Kalimantan last year, 94.5 percent of students passed the exams, while this year 99.36 percent of students in the province passed.

In East Nusa Tenggara 97.68 percent of students passed the exam in 2012, while this year 98.25 percent of students passed. Meanwhile in Gorontalo, 99.38 percent of students passed the exam this year, down slightly from 99.9 percent last year.

'Based on this data, we concluded that the delays did not significantly decrease the graduation percentage,' Nuh said. 'Assertions that students were stressed due to the delays or that the scanners would find it hard to read the answer sheets were all proved wrong.'

The report also showed that 15,476 high schools, or 86.98 percent of the total in the country, saw 100 percent of their students pass the exams this year.

According to Nuh, there were 24 senior high schools where all of the students failed the exams. However, he did not reveal the names or locations of the schools. 'We will analyze why 24 schools had a 100 percent failure rate. It could be because of a lack of infrastructure or teacher shortages,' he said.

'For all the students who failed the exams, they should not worry as they can take the Package C exam [Paket C], or retake the exams next year,' Nuh said.

Educational experts cast doubt on the results, saying the delays that forced students in remote areas to take the exams using photocopied materials meant the integrity of the exams could not be guaranteed.

'We question the validity of the exam results, because thousands of students took the exams on photocopied materials, it would be impossible for there not to have been leaks,' Retno Listyarti from the Indonesian Teachers Union Federation said. 'By keeping the national exams, the ministry is basically continuing a structured deceitfulness and the result definitely does not define the country's education quality.'

Two weeks ago, the ministry concluded that managerial errors and delayed budget disbursement were the factors behind the delays.

The late disbursement of funds from the state budget for the ministry ' because former finance minister Agus Martowardojo had found discrepancies of Rp 100.82 billion (US$10.38 million) between the allocation proposed by the government and that approved by the House of Representatives ' was deemed the core problem.

The minister also accepted the resignation of Khairil Anwar Notodiputro, head of research and development at the ministry.

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