Reflection on High School National Exam in Indonesia: Between Idealism and Pragmatism

The government of Indonesia yearly runs high school national exam in order to assess students' competence on several subjects. This event is not only important to certify the students' performance and achievement but also the exam result would be a part of requirements to enter higher education (university). Conceptually, there are some good developments in this national exam processes. The national government, let say, Ministry of Education and Culture (MENDIKBUD) together with National Educational Standard Body (BNSP) has outlined and highlighted some important regulations and procedures in form of standard operational procedure (SOP) to ensure that the practice of national exam is done in a proper way. Producing and distributing exam materials are done in very strict and secret way by involving the state university and police office in supervising and guarding the process. Post office is also involved in delivering the exam materials directly to the police office at the district level (POLSEK) that cover some high school institutions in the area. To avoid the practice of cheating, the government produced five different modules of questions with certain pattern of student placement in the classroom. It is quite hard for students to cheat each other since each student who closely sit has a different module. In addition, the regional state university (and private university) in each province is actively involved in supervising the national exam. The university assigned a competent lecturer to each school to supervise and monitor the exam process. In the implementation of the exam in school unit, two classroom supervisors are assigned to ensure that the exam is executed in proper and fair way. In short, the implementation process of national exam in Indonesia has been conceptualized in an ideal form.

However, the practice of the national exam is another story. Some concerns regarding to the implementation of the national exam have been raised by many educational observers and practitioners. Firstly, not all stakeholders in implementation of the national high school exam have the same perception, mission, and vision on how the national exam should be run to produce high competency of outputs. Some may only consider that the national exam as a local “political” issue. Each regent and subsequent institutions running the exam have their own interests. The regent would like to have best performance of which reflect in the end results of the exam, for instance, percentage of students passing and the rank of their performance among others in the region. They usually expect to have full passing of the test, and better position than other regencies (if not the best). In this regard, it is the obligation and the interest of district education agency to do at “their best” to ensure that their students pass the national exam as high as possible.

Secondly, some possible problems may occur when the exam materials are produced and distributed. Although those activities have been strictly guarded, some possible leakages may happen on the way the booklets are delivered to the storage place of the sub district police office (POLSEK). For example, in the case of the district of Dompu, West Nusa Tenggara (NTB), when delivering the exam booklets, from Mataram, the capital city of the NTB province to the district of Dompu, the regional post office of NTB only used one delivery truck but when those booklets arrived in Dompu, the booklets were divided in three portions for three different zones based on the location lane of the sub district police offices to make the distribution more effective and efficient. It means that the sacks of the booklets had to be opened and disaggregated based on those locations. The exam materials would stay about two nights at the police office. It is the responsibility of the police officer to secure the exam materials up to the last exam day. When the headmaster or the head of exam school committee took the exam materials at the sub district police office, it was found that exam booklets were misplaced or mixed in other subject boxes. For example, at one school I supervised, it was found that about five booklets of exam materials for day one were missing, and they had to open other boxes to search the missed booklets and fortunately they were found in the box of exam booklets for the second day. In this case, production and distribution in the future should be managed properly, especially how the exam materials are packed and distributed based on the location and exam schedule.

Lastly, at the school level, the headmasters have also their own interests, e.g. to secure his position and reputation. As a result, in some cases, they may instruct the classroom supervisors to loosen their supervision by tolerating students to cheat in any forms. It is often that answer sheets were not sealed in the classroom with the reason of further checking errors in the students’ answer sheets. This action is unacceptable because it violates SOP set by BNSP. Although the regional state university (Mataram University) deployed additional supervisors at school unit level, the effectiveness of the supervision is still questionable due to their limited access and authority in fully handling some infringements happened in the classrooms. In this case, the fair running of the exam in the classrooms mainly depends on the integrity of the classroom supervisors.

The quality of the implementation of high school national exam very much depens on the seriousness and integrity of all stakeholders (Depdikbud at central, regional, district levels, police officer, university, supervisors, teachers, parents, as well as students) involved in this process. The national government, especially MENDIKBUD, should improve the quality of exam system to assure fairness and truthfulness of the national exam implementation. If we were unable to run this national exam in a proper and fair manner, it is quite impossible to achieve the noble objective of quality and professional education. We just waste resources for something that we are not proud of. It may be better to look other options on how this kind of exam is executed. It is advisable that this kind of exam is entrusted to local institutions (provincial level, district level, or school level) to tun their own exam based on national curriculum and standard.