Less Risk of No Questions in Animation Format

Jawa Pos, page 1

In general, the Computer-Based National Exam (UNBK) of SMK ran smoothly. However, the fact that the questions did not appear on several students’ computers was a serious concern. This was not expected to occur in UNBK of SMA and MA that starts today.

National Exam (UN) of 2017 is different as the UN implementation of SMK and SMA as well as MA are not all being run at the same time. Last week, 1.3 million SMK students took the UN for the first turn. The next turn will be 1.7 million SMA/MA students who face the four-day UN starting today.

The UN implementation of SMK ran smoothly last week. The issue of cheating such as the questions being leaked or the answer key distribution that often was a problem was barely found. There were also no reports regarding students cheating by using the answer keys.

The one and only problem that marred the UN implementation of SMK occurred on the final day of Computer Based National Exam (UNBK), specifically at the time of the vocational theory exam. Many students complained because around ten exam questions did not appear on the monitor screens. The questions were in animation and video format.

The Head of Education Assessment Center (Puspendik) of Balitbang Kemendikbud, Nizam, explained that this massive technical problem on the final day day of the UNBK SMK will not occur again in the UNBK of SMA/MA. He assured that there are no questions in the video or animation format for SMA/MA.

However, the government should be aware. This was because there were still other problems in the UN implementation of SMK, such as disconnected network, and power outages. These problems definitely could occur in the UN of SMA/MA.

Nizam expected that the UN implementation for SMK would prove a motivation for the SMA/MK version to run smoothly. He mentioned that there was no report regarding distribution of answer keys or leakage of exam questions. Nevertheless, Nizam said that efforts were being made to ensure the problems that occurred with the SMK version of UNBK would not resurface in the SMA/MA version.