Jakarta – The national exams currently underway nationwide have been plagued by problems of systemic misconduct among schools and education agency officials, the Muhammadiyah Youth Association (IPM) says.

Each year the association opens a post during the national exams period, to receive complaints from students and parents.

IPM chairman Slamet Nur Acmad Effendy announced Tuesday that his organization had received numerous complaints from several regions including Aceh, Yogyakarta and West Java. "On the first day of the exams we received more than 50 complaints from all regions," he said.

The association had received many accounts of misconduct in relation to the high school exams, which concluded last week, he said.

"The five separate question sheets did not improve the quality of the exams because some schools allowed students to cooperate with each other," he said. "Government supervision to prevent misconduct has tightened this year, but these efforts are fruitless if we are seeing systematic [breaches] being made by schools and education agencies," he said.

His organization had received one complaint from a teacher in Aceh who reported that the local education agency had allowed students to cheat. "The report says teachers and exams supervisors ignored students caught cheating," he said.

He added that the education ministers' statement that the high school exams had been a success needed to be questioned. "In fact, we have received many complaints. We still have the junior high school exams this week and elementary school exams next week." (lfr)