Some Positives and Negatives of National Examination

            National Examination ( henceforth as NE ) is an exam held every year as a National graduation standard in Indonesia. This exam is held to measure the students’ educational quality and as the requirement for those who want to continue their higher study programs. Year by year the NE policy changed. This phenomenon brings a bad society’s stereotypes. Some of the societies say that NE must not be held anymore for it gives more bad impacts than the good ones. However, some of them say that it is important to hold NE for it is as a national educational standard in Indonesia. From this pro and cons we believe that NE either brings advantages or bad impacts in our educational quality, students, teachers, and other tangible and intangible stakeholders.

There are at least three advantages of NE in terms of increasing teachers’ qualities, stimulating competition among students, and measuring the national educational standard in Indonesia. The first advantage of NE is NE brings betterment for the teachers’ quality. It is a common phenomenon that teachers try to give their best so that their students successful in NE. Usually, those who teach NE subjects are the competent teachers in their schools. By this rule, the other teachers will be stimulated to give their bests, or even increase their teaching qualities. Moreover, most of the teachers consider NE is a very valuable thing to reach meaning that every school tries to prepare their students as well as possible so that they will pass the exam with high scores; and this success can be achieved only if those school has many competence teachers. By this, the headmasters will prepare high quality teachers.

The second, NE promotes competition among students which push the students to do their best. They will work harder to improve their knowledge and skills. In this way, they laern more and try to understand what their teachers explain clearly and carefuly. Thus, they will work harder to pass their NE and they will compete to get the highest grade in their classes or schools.

The third advantage of holding NE is that NE is one of the national educational standards in Indonesia.  “Student evaluation, educational unified, and educational program is an authority of an independent institution and will be done by using periodical, comprehensive, transparent, and systemic ways in order to evaluate the accomplishment of the  national educational standard” (UUD 1945 section 58 subsection  (2)). The elements of education consist of three things; they are process, practice, and evaluation. Learning is a complex process which is done in either schools or homes and led by teacher or parents. A teacher explains the lesson in a class and the students involve in class’ activities. One of class activity is practices. Practice is made for strengthen students’ comprehension and understanding. Then students needed to be evaluated by doing examination. Examination and practice are two sides of currency that rely on one another. The similarity is that it examines students’ understanding by doing exercise; yet it has the difference in some aspects. The evaluation process is a crucial thing in learning process because it uses to measure the students’ achievement in the whole of learning process. In examination, students are disallowed to open their book and it also held on a certain times. When there is an examination students usually demanded to do the best preparation before facing the exam. Students have to bring their identity card and the required stationary such as 2B pencil and Joyko eraser. That is why evaluation is very important in learning process.

On the other hand, NE brings some negative impacts since it brings some problems and in our societies. Some problems such as NE burdens students to study hard, students treat unfairly, and give some institutions chance to corrupt the NE budget. Since the result of NE becomes the standard of school’s graduation, students who are the major tangible stakeholder of it has been burdening in term of achieving the require scores. They are supposed to study harder before and during the NE. It makes them more stressful because if they cannot pass the score, automatically their efforts for three years study in schools are useless. If they cannot achieve the require score, they cannot graduate from the school. Consequently, they cannot register for the next level of their study programs.

The other problem that caused by NE is that students will be treated unfairly. For instance, the students who have studied for three years only determined by three days in NE meaning that the teachers only focus on teaching the main courses of NE. For example, the general main courses in Senior or Vocational High Schools are Indonesian language, Mathematic, and also English. Thus, the students will only study about NE and underestimate other courses. They will not study more on other courses which do not belong to NE courses such as religion, civic, and moral education. We think that Indonesian students need more moral education nowadays, the morality of Indonesian students is bad. For example, there are many immoral videos shown in the Internet. It means they are not given enough moral education or even haven’t taught about it at all.

The last problem is NE causes several institutes do corruption. The reason is because National Examination is rather over budget; NE is a national event which all the regions in Indonesia must hold it for the standard of the student graduation. The government has responsibility to pay all of the NE’s cost for all the regions. It causes over budget for government payment. Muh. Nuh, the education minister, explains that in 2012 the government gave Rp 600 billion for the NE. In 2014 the cost of NE is Rp 545 billion. The cost of NE takes so many numbers from residents’ tax. The huge numbers of money has made bad people in the government who have the chance do corruption. It is absolutely make Indonesian are loose out because the over budget are used for self-interest.

Take this case for example, there was auction process of NE on 2013, and it did not go very well. Some agencies concluded that there was an institute cheating. Based on the KOMPAS news, Tuesday (23/4/2013) stated that the name of the institution is PT Ghalia. PT Ghalia won the auction process, whereas it was an institution with highest deal, 22.8 billion. While the others, including PT Aneka Ilmu (17 billion) and PT Jasuindo Tiga Perkasa (21.1 billion) didn’t have the chance to be the winner. For some people, it was quite rare. Usually, the institution which has deal with lowest standard will be the winner. The other suspicious thing is PT Ghalia also had the other problem with NE paper distribution. They didn’t fulfill their promise to distribute National Examination paper on the right time. It made some high schools, MA, & SMK for 11 regions delayed on that time.

All in all, NE brings either positive or negative impacts. The positives impacts are NE increases teachers’ qualities, stimulates competition among students, and measures the National educational standard in Indonesia. Meanwhile, the negative sides of NE are it burdens the students, students treat unfairly, and pave away to corrupt the budget. Due to those things, it is essential hold the NE as a measurement of National educational quality standard in Indonesia so that the government can develop Indonesian educational quality and not to be the main measurement to continue students’ higher study programs.

References :

1.       file:///D:/Anggaran%20Ujian%20Nasional%202014%20Rp%20545%20Miliar%20_%20-nasional-%20_%20Tempo.co.htm.

2.      file:///D:/Mendikbud%20%20Anggaran%20Ujian%20Nasional%20Rp%20600%20Miliar%20-%20Kompas.com.html

By : NAILAH SA’DIYATUL FITRIAH

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