REFORMULATION OF NATIONAL EXAMINATION POLICY IN INDONESIA

REFORMULATION OF NATIONAL EXAMINATION  POLICY IN INDONESIA

 By: Syafaruddin Marpaung*

(English Teacher at SMAn 2 Tanjungbalai)

1.  Introduction

The employment of National Examination (UN) policy as a national standardized testing for  secondary  (lately  also  for  primary)  school  students  in  Indonesia  has  triggered  a national debate since the beginning 2003/2004 academic year. This debate seems to be deadlock as every party believes that they are in right position. Those who oppose it argue that this policy is considered to be ‘injustice’ to be used as a base to make a very important decision about students’ life future. This is due to the fact that  there  is  still  a  big  discrepancy  in  quality  among schools across the regions in Indonesia. They also believe that the UN has brought about many conspicuous negative effects on teachers, students,  parents, school administrators, and curriculum.

The  government, on the other hand, says that the UN is important as the  government needs  it as a benchmark to evaluate the  success  of  teaching  and  learning  process  in national  level.  The result of the UN will be used  as one of important inputs as well as feedbacks  for the government to formulate  programs for the betterment and advancement of national education quality. 

Having look at this seemingly endless national debate, it is urgent and necessary to find out a solution for a more  acceptable format of  National Examination. This  paper reviews  a  brief  history  of  national  standardized  testing  in  Indonesia,  discusses  some negative impacts of the  current UN,  and  offers  some  preliminary  ideas  about  the reformulation of National Examination for secondary school students in Indonesia.

2.   A Brief History of National Standardized Testing in Indonesia

Standardized testing has long been the dominant feature in the education system in the Republic of Indonesia. Furqon (2004) in Syahril (2007) explains that in the period of 1965-1971 th  Ujian Negara (State exam) was practiced for almost all subjects for students at the end of each of the  school level,  elementary,  middle  school and high school. Although, a non-standardized  testing  policy  was  endorsed  for  the  next  seven years, where schools were given the authority to design and hold the final exam based on  the  guidelines  from  the  central  government,  in  1980  Indonesia  went  back to the centralized  exam system. The Evaluasi Belajar Tahap AkhirbNasional (National Final Learning Evaluation), commonly shortened as Ebtanas, was implemented for twenty-one years.

Starting  from  the  year  2003,  a new form of  nation-wide  standardized  exam  was  called Ujian  Akhir  Nasional  (National Final Examination),  popular  with  the  acronym  UAN  was introduced. The subjects tested were Indonesian language, English, and Math. It was up to the schools and provinces to decide whether or not they required students to take final tests on other subjects. UAN itself was kept to be done until 2004.

Under the new cabinet in 2005, the new Ministry of Education still decided to conduct a similar  form  of  test,  which  was given a new  name, Ujian  Nasional (National Examination), shortened as UN. Despite heavy criticisms for the previous UAN, UN still uses the same format, testing three subjects, Math, Indonesian language and English to students at the end of their senior year in middle school and high school. 

3.  Some Important Features of Current National Examination

As a national standardized test, the UN is addressed to all high school students all over the country who sit in the third year (the new term used in the latest curriculum is “grade

twelve” for senior high school or ‘grade nine’ for  junior  high  school) of their  schooling period. 

According to clause 2 of the Decree No. 34/2007 from the Ministry of National Education or Permendiknas,  the main goal  of  the UN  is to measure  and  assess  the  students’ knowledge  and  competence in particular  subjects  they have learned. Clause  3  of  the same decree specifically  states  that  the  National  Exams  is  going  to  be used as one of consideration for four purposes: first, as  a means of  mapping Indonesia’s national education quality; second as a basis  to determine  whether  students  can  pass  and proceed from one educational level to another level; third, as the main consideration on whether  to accept  new  students  in the  upper  levels of education;  fourth,  as a basis  to supervise  and  assist  particular  schools  in order  to  achieve  the quality  of national education (Depdiknas, 2007b)

One of important characteristics of UN (including UAN) is that the government employs the  minimum  threshold  (popular  with  passing  grade) for  the  candidates  to  achieve  in order to pass  the examination. The minimum threshold is increased year by year, from 3.01 in 2003  to 5.01  in 2006. Even, in 2007/2008  academic  year,  not  only  did  the government raise the new minimum threshold,  from 5.01  to  5.25,  it  also  added  three more subjects to be tested in  the National  Examination. The new ones are Math, Sociology, and Geography for Social Science students, or  Biology, Chemistry  and Physics for Natural Science students (Depdiknas, 2007b).

Again, the candidates must achieve the minimum threshold in order to pass the  test. Otherwise, they are going to be considered ‘failed’. Consequently, they have to repeat allsubjects  in the following  academic year (Depdiknas,  2007b). In other words,failure  to achieve the minimum threshold in UN will automatically result in failure to graduate high school, regardless the student’s overall performance during their school years.

Looking at the serious consequences made from UN, It is clear that this National Examination can be categorized as a high stakes testing.  McNamara (2000, p.48) defines a  high-stakes test as “a test which provides information on the basis of whichsignificant  decisions are made about candidates”. So, in high stakes testing, a test is generally used as  the basis to make an important decision about students’ lives. The decision could relate to admission to a course or to having access to the market place. 

4. Negative Impacts of UN on Teachers, Students, School Administrators, and Curriculum

As a high stakes testing, it is believed that the UN has brought about many impacts on The stakes-holders in education. A qualitative study by Afrianto (2007) by conducting in-depth interviews with some English teachers in North Sumatera confirms some serious negative impacts of the UN on teachers, students, and curriculum.The impacts are that the  UN has led teachers to do teaching to the test, narrowing curriculum, willing to engage on cheating, and feeling under pressure.

4.1. Teaching to the Test

It is apparent that the high stakes of National Examination has led teachers to  teaching to the test activity. This means that most of teaching activities focus on familiarizing the students with the features of the test as well as introducing test taking strategies to the students to enable them to answer the questions well. In other word,because of teaching to the test activities, teachers tend to be less creative and less innovative in designing  their  lesson. What is perceived as more important to teach is the skills to answer the multiple-choice pencil-and-paper tests

In the Indonesian classroom context, what teachers usually practice is that they conduct extra classes where most of the time they employed activities like familiarizing the students with the test format, discussing the questions, discussing strategies to answer the  questions in more easily and more quickly as well as conducting some trial tests prior to the  rea examination. They made a close link between the contents of their teaching with the content of the UN test.

In short, because of this teaching to the test activity, the learning atmosphere in many schools now has unconsciously changed to be like in tutoring institution (Bimbingan Belajar)  where teachers there usually employ the test-drive drills approach in their teaching. This activity implies doing something in class that may not be compatible with teacher’s own values and goals or with the values or goals stated in the curriculum.

According to Swain  (1985, p. 43 cited in Bailey 1999, p. 21) this phenomenon is  an inevitable consequence of a high-stakes testing policy within education. Similarly, Lachat  1999, p.13)states ,‘the belief  that  high stakes” test scores were the most reliable indicator  of both student achievement and educational quality has shaped educators’ views about what should be taught in schools for decades’. Yet it is worthwhile to bearing in mind that the practice of teaching to the test could bring about some problems. It could result in some unwanted consequences within the nature of teaching and learning. One of the consequences is that it has made teachers neglect other subjects which are not tested in this National  Examination. As Popham (2000, cited  in Volante, 2004,  p. 3) maintains, “teaching to  the test phenomenon may include relentless drilling on test content, eliminating important curricular content not covered by the test, and providing interminably long practice session that incorporates actual items from these high-stakes standardized tests”.

Furthermore, Popham reminds that “item-teaching, instruction around items either found on a test or a set of look-alike items, is reprehensible since it erodes the inferences we can make about students’ scores.” By this understanding, we can not simply judge a student’s English proficiency, for example, merely based on his or her English score in the National Examination. A student who gets a high score after being exposed extensively to items of the English National Examination through items teaching activities might have poor real English proficiency. On the other hand, it is possible for a certain student, who has  relatively good English competency, gets a lower score, because the teacher does not employ items teaching; and therefore the student is not familiar with the test mechanism.

In this context, Volante (2004, para. 8) further reminds us that research  conducted  by Shepard (2000) and Smith and Fey (2000) suggests that “while students’ scores will rise when teachers teach closely to a test, learning often does not change.  In fact, the opposite may be true. That is, there are schools that have demonstrated improvements in student learning while their standardized test scores did not show significant gains.”

This research finding implies that a high score obtained by students in a particular school might not accurately reflect that school has a good teaching quality. It is possible that they  get a good score, because they do ‘teaching to the test’ activities intensively prior to the test. Conversely, it is likely for the students who enroll in a school with a good English program to get a lower score, because English teachers in this school focus on the nature of teaching as  mandated in the English curriculum, instead of focusing on teaching to the test. Schools  with excellent students English debate activities, for example, might be unable to achieve an excellent score in English test, as the test does not assess students’ speaking or debate skills. So, because of the teaching of the test, “schools may be mistakenly categorized as high achieving because of their utilization of inappropriate  test  preparation  activities,  not  necessarily because of the actual characteristics of their student body” (Volante, 2004, para.12)

Furthermore, the practice of teaching to the test in Indonesian classrooms has also undermined the predictive validity of the test results, as the results are likely not to give an authentic picture of the candidates’ proficiency, and therefore could not be used as the basis to predict their academic achievement in the higher levels of education. 

4.2. Narrowing the Curriculum

Another subsequent impact of teaching to the test activities is that the test,  in some ways, has narrowed down the school curriculum (Yeh cited in Mitchel,  2006).This means that the teachers mainly focus on teaching  the subjects tested in the national exam and ignore other subjects. Volante (2004, para. 9) maintains, “teaching to the test not  only  reduces the depth of instruction in specific subjects but it also  narrows  the curriculum so that non-tested disciplines receive less attention during the school day”.

In current Indonesian classroom practices, there is a trend that time is often  devoted away from subjects like History, Religious teaching, Physical  Education,  Arts,  and  Life Skills. In other words,  teachers  provide  more  instructional  time  on  commonly  tested areas like  Bahasa Indonesia, English and Mathematics. Even, some schools only require their student only to study the six  subjects tested  in  the  national  examination and intentionally ignore the other subjects.

The ignoring of these subjects in the schools could undoubtedly lead teachers to narrow down the curriculum. This means that there will be an unmentioned understanding in the students’ and teachers’ subconscious minds that the other subjects are not as important as other tested-subjects. A serious problem may appear if teachers as well  as  students  think  in  such  a  way, because they may find in their real life later that the ignored subjects are, in fact, very important. In English teaching context, a student may develop a narrow view of English learning.  They might  have been misled by the fact that the English test  in the National Examination only addresses two macro skills (reading and listening), and therefore many teachers focus on teaching these two skills. It is possible that this focus would  lead students  to an unmentioned understanding that other skills (speaking and writing) are not as  important  as reading and listening skills. In fact, these four  skills are equally important when they communicate later in a real life situation.

Herman (2002, cited in Volante, 2004) further argues that teaching a narrow curriculum is likely to isolate some student  whose academic strengths lie outside  of the tested skills.  In  an  English  testing  context,  students  who  are  good  at  speaking  and  writing would probably unable to pass the test, as the test does not assess their speaking and writing  skills.  The same case might  happen  to  other  students  who  are  really  good  at physical education or very talented in music, but unable to graduate from school as they can’t do the six subjects tested well.

4.3. Willing to Engage in Cheating

The high stakes nature of the test has encouraged some students and even teachers in Indonesia to be willing to engage in cheating during  the examination.  Cheating  cases have been identified in many places across the regions in Indonesia during  the examination,  like in Aceh, Medan  Pekanbaru, Padang, Cilegon, Depok, Bandung, Ngawi, and in many other places (Depdiknas, 2007a; Kompas, 2006; Rakyat, 2006).

The cases have been unhappy annual stories  in Indonesian  education after the examination finishes. In 2006/2007 academic year, for example, 72 of Dhuafa Vocational High School students in  Padang West Sumatera walked out fro  th  test  rooms as a protest to  the exam committee. They perceived that  the  exams  committees  as  doing nothing when other students were allegedly cheating in the examination (Bachyul, 2007). 

In the same year, another case was in Medan city, North Sumatera. Some teachers in this city quit from being the test invigilators and then gathered to report the allegedly systematic cheating all over the Medan region. This group of teachers attracted nationwide  attention when they presented  evidence  of  rampant cheating  during  the examination. They reported that the cheating itself had been systematically organized by some principals and teachers long before the test day (Gunawan, 2007).

In the following year, 2007/2008 academic year, the same case again became a public attention when sixteen teachers in Medan were  arrested  by  Densus  Anti  Teror  88  (a special police brigade whose main task to fight against terrorism in Indonesia) because the were allegedly engaged in cheating activity by correcting  the  students’  answer sheet after the examination finished (Kompas, 2008). It is found that  the  methods  of  teachers’  involvement in  alleged  teaching during the National Examination  in  Indonesia  are  starting from letting their students ‘help  each other’ during the exams, correcting and rewriting students’ answers, distributing answers to  the  students  in  the  class  via  sms  or  via  a  piece  of  paper  hanging  on  somewhere around the school where certain students could easily pick it out and then distribute it to other students, to stealing the question papers prior to the examination day as happened to   a   high   school   principal   who was caught stealing the papers  in  Ngawi,  East Java (Gunawan, 2007; Napitupulu, 2007).

It is reasonably assumed that these cheating cases are closely related to the issues of unfairness within the passing grade policy. The minimum threshold is considered to be too high for students in rural areas where they usually learn with limited facilities. As a teacher   confessed she tends  to  let  her  students  engaged  in cheating during  exams, because       she knows  that  it’s  really  hard  for their students  to achieve   the  required minimum score in order to pass the test by themselves. Moreover, she couldn’t stand to see   her   students  to repeat in  the following year  if  they  didn’t  pass the test (Afrianto, 2007).

Whatever the reasons, cheating is  indeed a  crime.  This misbehaviour is  really  an unhappy story for the future of Indonesian education. It will certainly affect the way the students learn. It is likely that they are unwilling to study hard anymore, as they can pass the test easily by engaging in cheating during examination. Furthermore, cheating can erode and kill the basic educational values which engender respect for discipline, hard working ethics, and honesty.

4.4. Feeling stressed and under pressure

The high stakes nature of the test has made teachers feel stressed and under pressure in conducting teaching activities prior to the test day. This stress is also triggered by the fact that teachers have been burdened by high expectations from school principals and from   parents in  order  to  help students  pass the  test. Consequently, many teachers reported that they were feeling insecure and worried if their students would not pass the test.  They   are afraid of being blamed by the  society  as  being  unqualified teachers if many students failed in the examination (Afrianto, 2007)

It is obviously not good for the teaching process if teachers are feeling under pressure. This  insecure feeling may lead  teachers  to a situation where they can not enjoy their profession. When teachers find that teaching is no longer enjoyable, it may prevent their efforts to be creative and professional. The worst thing is that this unwanted situation will eventually affect the educational quality in Indonesia. If this situation  happens, where teachers are feeling unhappy due to pressure of the national examination, it is certainly a paradoxical situation as  the existence of  the national examination  itself  was  initially intended to improve the quality of national education in Indonesia.

Syahril (2007) also reported that feeling under pressure is not only felt by teachers, but also by student and school administrators. In  the last exams(2007/2008  academic year), it was  reported that a student  of  junior high school in Kerjo  Karanganyar   killed herself after knowing that she didn’t pass the national examination (Rasyid, 2007). Many witnesses believe that she did the suicide because she was depressed of  high consequences of the UN.

In addition, the pressure can be a lot bigger for school administrators, because the exam scores are used as the symbol for prestige for them. The scores are used as the criteria to determine good quality schools, either by the ministry of education, or by the general public. They are very competitive about the ranking of their schools, and will often dowhatever it takes to achieve maximum results.

It is believed that this situation has led teachers, students, and school administrators did a ‘short cut’ by doing manipulative acts during the exams. As Syahril (2007, p. 7) reports,

“the pressure has seemed to force teachers and administrators to take short-cuts to ensure that their goals are achieved. The serious incapacity to achieve the target results has frustrated many teachers and administrators that they have decided to use unethical practices to solve their problem”

 5. A Need for a ‘New UN’ Reformulation.

            Having looked at those serious negative effects of UN on teachers, students, and school administrators, it is urgent and necessary for us now to rethink and reformulate this UN with a better format which is more acceptable by every related stake-holder. Here, I offer some preliminary ideas about the issue of reformulation of the UN.  My ideas are divided into two schemes; some ideas for currently existing format of UN and a formulation for a ‘new UN’. If the government wants to keep the current format of UN exist, I think the government must do all mandated points in Permendiknas about the UN consistently. One of important points in that Permendiknas is that the government should pay special attention, supervise, and give assistance to schools which perform under standard in the previous UN. In other words, low achiever schools are entitled for special treatment from the government to make them perform better in the next exams. However, as far as I am concerned, the government has not yet done its obligation regarding this issue. Low achiever schools remain under achievers as they have never got any assistance from the government.

Then, a ‘remedial’ test in the same year (not so long after the first examination finish)

should also be considered to be reapplied for students who can not achieve the threshold in the first test. It is important to remember that it is very possible for a particular student, because of a certain condition, like physically unwell or psychologically sick; he or she can not perform well in the first examination. So, by giving him or her a second chance, s/he might be able to show his or her best and can achieve the threshold.

In addition, it is highly recommended for the government to reduce the stakes of the UN as it is believed that the high nature of the stakes of the UN has brought about many negative impacts on teachers, students, and school administrators. To put this in practice, it is necessary to amend the article in Ministry of National Education Act which states that this exam will be used as a base to determine whether a student can leave his or her high school. It really sounds unreasonable if the students’ life is only determined by the score of the six subjects tested in the UN. 

            I myself still think that the UN is still necessary to motivate students, teachers, and school administrators to perform better at their schools. But the result of the test should only be used as one inputs for schools quality mapping in Indonesia by which the government can design a special program to reduce the gap between good performance schools and low performance schools rather than being used for graduation determination.

Furthermore, a district based examination is also an interesting alternative as a solution for the current controversial UN as one of important issues within UN policy is that there is a huge gap in quality among schools across the regions in Indonesia. So, a district made exams may become a way out for this problem. Here, each district is given authority to run its own evaluation system as a part of autonomy policy within education sector in Indonesia. 

In a district based exam system, the local government can assign a special body to formulate and design ‘the best format of district examination’ by considering every unique characteristic they have, while the central government main task is only to control and supervise the local government to achieve the national standards of education.

            Then, let teachers at schools make a final decision regarding the students’ graduation by taking students’ whole performance during their school period into account, as it is clear that a teacher is the one who exactly knows every single development made by a particular student during his or her study at school. This is not only a way to have a more reasonable decision about student, but also to return the teachers’ authority in doing the evaluation process for their students’ learning as mandated by law (Article 58/1 UU No. 20/2003 about National Education System).

            When teachers are given authority to determine whether a student can leave the school or not, she should consider ‘the students’ multiple intelligence’ during their school period. So, it is expected that a teacher should put a student’s musical intelligence, kinesthetic intelligence, interpersonal intelligence (among others) in an equal line with student’s mathematic and linguistic intelligence when s/he makes a decision whether a student can leave the school.

Here, the use of portfolio assessment is highly recommended, as this kind of assessment will be more likely to depict more comprehensive pictures about students’ academic and personal development during his or her schooling period. A correct use of portfolio assessment will help teachers to have a valid source to consider for the graduation decision.

Last, it is also important for the government in Indonesia to find out the possibility to use the result of UN to enroll in a university. It really sounds ‘unfortunate’ if the results of UN can only be used for leaving the school purpose by the students. It is worth nothing  that when school graduates want to continue their study to higher levels of education in Indonesia, they are required to take another test for entering the universities (well-known as  The University Entrance Test/SPMB) as the authorities in universities are unwilling to take the National Examination score results into account. In other words, the students’ scores from this National Examination are ‘useless’ to predict students’ future life in education.

6. Conclusion

            As a controversial national policy, the government needs to open their eyes and listen carefully and emphatically to the voices from many parties which has continuously reminded the government that there is ‘something wrong’ with the current format of the National Examination in Indonesia. The UN has brought about many conspicuously negative impacts on teachers, students, curriculum, and school administrators. The impacts range from the issue of teaching to the students, feeling under pressure, narrowing curriculum, to willing to engage in cheating. 

This paper has discussed some preliminary ideas which is hopefully useful as alternative solutions for the controversial UN. Some of the proposed ideas are that the government needs to reduce the stakes of the test, to return the authority for evaluations to the teachers as the owner stated in Educational Law, to use the portfolio assessment by paying attention to every dimension of student’s intelligence, to reapply the remedial test, and to find possibility to use UN score to enter the university.

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