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JAKARTA. Education and Culture Minister Mohammad Nuh managed to save face when the national examinations (UN) for junior high school students began on the same day nationwide, though many students had to start their tests a few hours late.
“The national exams for junior high schools have been taking place on the same day, even though not all at the same time,” Nuh told reporters on Monday. “During the past three days, we have conducted emergency measures.”
As recently reported, the ministry has been in the spotlight for failing to hold the senior high school national exams simultaneously, when 11 provinces were forced to begin the exam three days’ late due to distribution problems.
The ministry has annulled 10 out of the 11 contracts won by PT Ghalia, a printing company that shouldered the blame for the delays to the senior high school exams in 11 provinces last week. Ghalia is only allowed to manage exam materials for Bali, while the contracts for the other 10 provinces have been awarded to Ghalia’s competitors, PT Pura Baru Tama, PT Temprina and PT Jaswindo.
Nuh appreciated the support given by the National Police (Polri), the Indonesian Military (TNI) and the education agencies in each province to ensure that the national exams ran well. “As an illustration, military aircraft have transported UN materials weighing more than 360 tons on more than 40 flights. This shows how all-out they have been in helping us,” Nuh said.
Despite the ministry’s emergency measures to try to guarantee that the exams, which are taken by around 3.7 million students, begin simultaneously, several provinces have had to cope with the late arrival of test papers.
Four regencies in East Nusa Tenggara (NTT) started the exam four hours behind schedule due to the delay in distribution. NTT education agency head Klemens Meba said the exams had not begun on schedule because the distribution of the materials only began on Monday morning.
Three regencies in West Nusa Tenggara (NTB), namely West Sumbawa, Dompu and Bima, also had to delay exams for three hours due to the late distribution of materials.
NTB Education, Youth and Sports Agency chief Lalu Syafi’i said that the exam materials only reached the province on Sunday afternoon.
In order to minimize the delay, South Sulawesi’s Education and Culture Agency decided to distribute the exam materials, which had only arrived on Sunday night, using helicopters to reach more remote areas in the province. “If the materials had been distributed by boat, they would not have arrived on time; therefore, we used helicopters,” said Education and Culture Agency head Abdullah Jabbar.
He added that some schools in the province were still facing shortages of test papers and so were making photocopies.
In South Tangerang, the exams also failed to run smoothly due to the shortage of test papers at several schools. Similar to other provinces, the education agency has been encouraged to copy the papers to cover the shortfall.
According to Nuh, exam materials could be photocopied in the presence of witnesses from universities, the local education agency or the police, as part of the standard procedures for the exams.
Meanwhile in Yogyakarta, teachers expressed their disappointment at the absence of answering sheets for visually impaired students.
“The ministry did not provide special answering sheets for them, so they had to write their answers on a regular, very thin sheets of paper,” said Agus Suryanto, the principal of an Islamic special school, the Madrasah Tsanawiyah (MTS) Luar Biasa A.
According to Agus, the students needed thicker answering sheets in order to correctly write their answers in Braille letters.
“If the answers are written on thin paper, the dots forming the letters are easily flattened, so there is a chance that the examiner may misinterpret the answers,” he said.
(Nadya Natahadibrata/The Jakarta Post)
Multa Fidrus, Suherdjoko, Bambang Muryanto, Panca Nugraha and Andi Hajramuni contributed reporting from Tanggerang, Semarang, Yogyakarta, Mataram and Makassar
