Jakarta/Medan/Semarang/Pekanbaru/Kupang – The three-day national final high school examination ended Thursday with reports of the same old problems: cheating and exam paper leaks. The leaks occurred despite the government's promise to increase security measures.
Reports of cheating during the exam were made in at least four regions.
In North Sumatra, 17 teachers, including the principal, at a high school in Deli Serdang regency were named as suspects after local police caught them in the act of correcting their students' answer sheets.
In Surakarta, Central Java, the Independent Watchdog Team found answer keys to English and chemistry tests in four cell phones belonging to students.
In Riau, a teacher, who asked not to be named, told the press leaks of exam answer keys were organized by a group of five high school principals and a number of teachers in Selatpanjang district.
In Kupang, East Nusa Tenggara, a number of teachers allegedly helped their students on the exams by sending answers to their cell phones by SMS.
Cheating seems to have been widespread again this year despite the increased security measures, head of the Education Assessment Center at the Education Ministry, Burhanuddin Tolla, said. However, no exam papers were leaked at the central and provincial levels, including by printing offices, he said.
"The misbehavior took place in the schools. After receiving the exam papers, they must have made the answer key quickly and distributed it to students. "Our independent watchdog team seemed unable to control this," Burhanuddin told The Jakarta Post on Friday.
He said the government had prepared supplementary exams in the event of cheating or leaks. Burhanuddin said those found guilty of aiding cheating or leaks would be punished to "teach them a good lesson" and to deter similar cases in the future.
Education experts Soedijarto and Mochtar Buchori said cheating would continue as long as the government continued to use the "high-standard national exam" to determine whether students could graduate while there remained large disparities among students in term of academic competency.
Mochtar said there needed to be serious efforts to improve the quality of disadvantaged schools before the national exam could apply.
Soedijarto said there should be better entrance tests for high schools with specialist study programs, as well as supplementary exams for those who fail the final exam.
Chairman of the Indonesian National Committee for UNESCO, Arief Rahman, said earlier this week that before the national final exam, there should have been preliminary tests to map academic competencies across regions.
"I agree with the national exam, but it should take into consideration the capacity of each region," he said.