This question should make it into a pocketbook of party jokes: What is it that students hate, teachers dislike, parents abhor, the public decries, but bureaucrats love?

But our national exams are no laughing matter. They have become a nightmare for hundreds of thousands of students who continue to fail them and are thus deprived of the chance to graduate and force to repeat a year or more. It is a nightmare for parents alike.

We don't understand why the government insists that the results of the exams must determine students' eligibility for graduation. Years of learning at schools are waved aside in determining this.

Teachers' quarterly or half-yearly evaluations of students' performance do not determine it either.

Worse, the government keeps increasing the passing grades, from 3.01 in 2003 to 4.01 in 2004 to 4.25 in 2005 and now to 5.5. This has caused reversed affects for students and teachers alike. In many places in the country, reports have it that teachers are turning a blind eye to students cheating in the national exams, and in some places, teachers, with the blessing of their schools, even help students do the exams so they can pass.

We simply don't understand why our bureaucrats love such controversial national exams. Their most-quoted argument is that the national exams are currently "the most appropriate means of assessment". Are they really? These people are just too lazy to find other, better and – most importantly – acceptable ways to gauge students' performance.

Our government turned a blind eye to this controversial issue of the national exams. The government has even ignored a ruling by the Central Jakarta District Court that faulted the President, the education minister and the head of the Education National Standardization Agency (BSNP) for holding the national exams.

The ruling, recently upheld by the Supreme Court, declared the government had violated the educational rights of those who had failed the national exams, and ordered them to take concrete action to address the students' psychological and mental problems as a result of the national exams.

The court also ordered the government to improve the quality of teachers, teaching-learning infrastructure at schools and access to information for all schools before holding any more national exams. The court also told the government to review the national education system.

But what we see is a government that remains defiant, heeding neither the people nor the court ruling, and pressing ahead with business as usual. President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono seemed to respect the ruling when opening a Cabinet meeting on Thursday by suggesting two alternatives. But hours later, his education minister, Mohammad Nuh, announced the President supported the national exams, and therefore the exams would be held earlier than scheduled, to accommodate make-up exams.

So the new thing is the make-up exams. Minister Nuh still said the students "have to pass the national exams". Rather than declare that the national exams will not determine students' eligibility for graduation, the government will hold two exams this year. What a waste of resources.

After all, the exams are the logical consequence of our unified national education system. Therefore we believe we should all pay more attention to the last point made in the Central Jakarta District Court's ruling, asking the government to review our national education system.

Maybe, as a first step, we should rename our National Education Ministry the Education Ministry (eliminating the word "National"), and thus allow regions and schools to tailor their curricula to local and individual needs. This way, we don't need national exams.