President Urged to Resolve the National Examination

Koran Sindo, page 2

President Joko Widodo (Jokowi) was urged to resolve and make a decision in respect to the plan for a moratorium on the national examination (UN) because teachers and students are currently confused about this issue. PB PGRI Unifah Rasyidi said that when the discourse was proposed, most of final year students had their focus on studying the subjects that are tested through UN. The current undetermined issue in regard to UN has caused confusion among both teachers and students as to whether to learn all subjects or just the three that are tested in the UN.

If the government decides to keep on holding UN, there should be an evaluation to adjust the system of UN next year. For example, cheating practices must be prevented and the leaking of exam sheets and answers. In addition, the selection and form of questions should demand high order thinking. If UN is to be decentralized, National Standard Body for Education (BSNP) must formulate Graduates Competence Standard (SKL) for UN. Furthermore, SKL from the central government must be adjusted for each region according to the local competence. In this way, the examination will meet the standard of each region and there can be no intervention from parties seeking to obtain higher UN results than other regions.

If the government wants UN to be used for the mapping of education, there must be a follow-up on the results of such mapping whereby there must be training for teachers in regard to the improvement of literacy. Teachers must also be trained to prepare the examination for students to achieve high order thinking as is currently being used by the government.