Jakarta (Kompas: (14/05/07) The national examination is over. Despite protests from the communities who are against it, the government believes that the national examination could be a useful means for education quality improvement. Many parties have been questioning the effectiveness of the national examination that cost hundreds of billion of rupiahs for education quality improvement in the country. The main questions are hereunder: Whether the national examination, with only three subjects tested, is reliable to assess education quality? Whether it is fair or not to determine students’ graduation using one of those three subjects tested? Is it true that the national examination could motivate students to work harder? 

Insignificant

Many parties are skeptical about the idea that the national examination might be able to help improving education quality in Indonesia. First of all, there are only three subjects tested in the national examination which could not be used to indicate the education quality. Justifying education quality assessment using those three subjects is unwise and it oversimplifies the problems we are facing. In assessing education quality, we should observe the whole structure of our education, including non-academic aspects,   input, process and output as well as education outcome.

Improving education quality is not as easy as testing three subjects and makes a generalization and justification concerning education quality assessment. The government should treat all teaching subject equally (not prioritizing a certain subject and marginalizing others). In reality at there has been a kind of ‘jealousy’ among the subjects tested in the national examination. With only three subjects tested, teachers and students are busy with national examination drilling without having any deep understanding on those teaching subjects form the scientific point of view. This will only kill student’s motivation to learn other subjects not tested in the national examination.

Such a condition will only make school shift from its function as an institution where students’ learn about positive values to become tutorial agency focusing on those three subjects tested If this happens, it means that the UN has degraded the essence of education Second, with the passing grade set at 5.00 in average for those three subjects tested, it is difficult to measure education quality improvement. How can we claim that education has been improving with such a low standard of graduation?

Third, there has been an indication of machination of the result of the national examination. The tradition to have all students graduate seems to ‘hypnotize’ education workers, especially teachers, school principals  and education agencies to make sure athat all the students will pass the national examination. Therefore, they establish a ‘success team’ tasked to boost passing rate to reach 100%. Inevitable, there is a perception that students’ score has been ‘marked up’.
The tradition to have all students’ graduates is against the principals of education because it does not motivate students and teachers to work harder. Teachers are not challenged to prepare themselves better before the class begins. There is no culture of competition, both for students and teachers, because eventually everyone will graduate. Apparently, teachers and school principles are ashamed if there are many students who failed to graduate. It seems that they are ashamed to recognize their own flaws. They fear that the result of the national examination highlights the lack of capacity and competency of educators in the field. Consequently, there is an impression that there has been an effort to manipulate the result of the national examination.