For junior high school students, it is a time of great stress. Some 3.3 million of them on Monday began their first day of national examinations as concerns over cheating and stolen exams linger.
Minister of National Education Muhammad Nuh made an impromptu early morning visit to a state junior high school in South Jakarta that had received the exam papers to be distributed in that area.
To his delight, the storage facility was locked and guarded by officials from the ministry and the police. He witnessed the guards unlock the room, take out the boxes of exam papers, all in sealed envelopes, and hand them to officials for distribution.
“Hopefully all is well. The test papers will be taken to their respective schools by 5:30 am and we don’t want the exams to be here any longer than they should because the longer they are kept here, the bigger the chance of cheating,” he said.
The ministry would take complaints about exams and reports of cheating seriously, he said, and follow up accordingly. Any violations would be dealt with, he added.
“However, we don’t want these cheating incidents to overshadow the whole national exams process,” Nuh said.
In order to improve the outcome of the exam process, it was equally important to instill honesty in students, teachers, headmasters and the public, he said.
“The exams are not just about testing the students’ cognitive ability but also to test their level of honesty. We want them to have both, achievement and honesty. They are like two sides of a coin,” he said.
Besides preventing leaks, teachers and independent supervisors had been asked to be ensure that no students took their cellular phones into the classrooms during the tests.
Last year’s exams were marred by a major cheating scandal that was revealed when university supervisors found that an estimated 5,000 students from 36 different schools had written the same wrong answers throughout the exams.
In Kupang, East Nusa Tenggara, five students from State Junior High School No. 5 did not attend today’s exams because of pregnancy or financial problems, school principal Fransiskus Wahan said.
In Bengkulu, three students took their national exams at the Malabero penitentiary where they were incarcerated, one for a traffic offence and two for theft, state news agency Antara reported.
It also reported that a Ternate junior high school student died after being hit by a fallen tree inside his school compound.
Minister of National Education Muhammad Nuh made an impromptu early morning visit to a state junior high school in South Jakarta that had received the exam papers to be distributed in that area.
To his delight, the storage facility was locked and guarded by officials from the ministry and the police. He witnessed the guards unlock the room, take out the boxes of exam papers, all in sealed envelopes, and hand them to officials for distribution.
“Hopefully all is well. The test papers will be taken to their respective schools by 5:30 am and we don’t want the exams to be here any longer than they should because the longer they are kept here, the bigger the chance of cheating,” he said.
The ministry would take complaints about exams and reports of cheating seriously, he said, and follow up accordingly. Any violations would be dealt with, he added.
“However, we don’t want these cheating incidents to overshadow the whole national exams process,” Nuh said.
In order to improve the outcome of the exam process, it was equally important to instill honesty in students, teachers, headmasters and the public, he said.
“The exams are not just about testing the students’ cognitive ability but also to test their level of honesty. We want them to have both, achievement and honesty. They are like two sides of a coin,” he said.
Besides preventing leaks, teachers and independent supervisors had been asked to be ensure that no students took their cellular phones into the classrooms during the tests.
Last year’s exams were marred by a major cheating scandal that was revealed when university supervisors found that an estimated 5,000 students from 36 different schools had written the same wrong answers throughout the exams.
In Kupang, East Nusa Tenggara, five students from State Junior High School No. 5 did not attend today’s exams because of pregnancy or financial problems, school principal Fransiskus Wahan said.
In Bengkulu, three students took their national exams at the Malabero penitentiary where they were incarcerated, one for a traffic offence and two for theft, state news agency Antara reported.
It also reported that a Ternate junior high school student died after being hit by a fallen tree inside his school compound.
