Standardized Testing in Indonesia

Running head: STANDARDIZED TESTING IN INDONESIA

Standardized testing in Indonesian secondary education:

An analysis on the impact of national exit exam (2005-2007)

Iwan Syahril

Teachers College, Columbia University

C&T 4145

Professor Nancy Lesko

Fall 2007

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Standardized Testing in Indonesia

Standardized testing in Indonesian secondary education:

An analysis on the impact of national exit exam (2005-2007)

The History of Standardized Testing in the Indonesia

Standardized testing has long been the dominant feature in the education system in the

Republic of Indonesia. Furqon (2004) explains that in the period of 1965-1971 the Ujian Negara

(State exam) was done for almost all subjects for students at the end of each of the school level,

elementary, middle school and high school. Although, a non-standardized testing policy was

endorsed for the next seven years, where schools were given the authority to design and hold the

final exam based on the guidelines from the central government, in 1980 Indonesia went back to

the centralized exam system. The Evaluasi Belajar Tahap Akhir Nasional (National Final

Learning Evaluation), commonly shortened as Ebtanas, was implemented for twenty-one years.

Ebtanas was used for three main purposes. First, it was used to determine students’ path

for their further education. If they were able to obtain high scores, they were eligible to choose

favorite schools in their next education level. Failure to do so would force them to attend schools

of lower quality and most likely the private ones, which would cost more. If their family was

quite well off, then they could attend good private schools, usually by paying some considerable

amount of donation to the school development. Secondly, it also served as the tool to filter

students to the next educational level, because of the smaller number of available schools as the

students progressed to the next education level. Thirdly, it was also utilized as a mapping tool to

inform quality improvement in Indonesian education.

In Ebtanas scheme, the decision about student graduation was largely in the hands of the

schools. Thus, students who performed poorly in these Ebtanas tests were still able to graduate

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provided they performed well in school. Ebtanas scores were just part of total scoring component

for student graduation, besides the provincial exams, and school grades.

The fall of the authoritarian government in 1998 breathed some new air of reform in all

sectors of development in Indonesia, including education. The initial reform effort in education

touched a number of issues, such as decentralized education system, school-based management,

competence-based curriculum, and portfolio-based assessment. There was a strong consideration

to abolish the nation-wide standardized testing. As a result, Ebtanas for the elementary school

was terminated in 2002, and for the secondary education, the number of subjects tested was

reduced. Both middle school and high school only have three subjects for the national exams,

compared to the previously five and seven subjects respectively.

The new form of nation-wide standardized exam was called Ujian Akhir Nasional

(National Final Examination), popular with the acronym UAN. The subjects tested were

Indonesian language, English, and math. It was up to the schools and provinces to decide

whether or not they required students to take final tests on other subjects.

Initially the passing grade was 3.01 out of 10.0. As everything was running as expected in

2004 the Ministry of Education decided to raise the minimum threshold for the passing to 4.01.

This decision faced strong opposition form many parents and teachers, because they feared it

would be too difficult for a great number of students to obtain the minimum of 4.01 for all three

subjects. This concern turned out to be the truth. Shocked by the unexpectedly poor results, the

Ministry of Education reacted quickly by drawing a conversion table, to many people’s surprise,

to equalize the achievements of students. Heavily criticized as introducing a great element of

gross injustice in scoring, this system had students who answered more than half of the test

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questions correctly see their final scores lowered in order to subsidize the ones who did very

poorly on the tests, who later their scores improved.

Under the new cabinet in 2005, the new Ministry of Education was still determined to

conduct the similar form of tests, which was given a new name, Ujian Nasional (National

Examination), shortened as UN. Despite heavy criticisms for the previous UAN, UN still uses

the same format, testing three subjects, math, Indonesian language and English to students at the

end of their senior year in middle school and high school. Moreover, UN raises the new

minimum threshold, from 4.01 to 4.51, which spread more terror to many of teachers, school

principals, and parents, who still have vivid images of what happened in the previous year. To

make it even more intimidating, UN is used as one of the decisive criteria to graduate high

school. In short, failure to achieve the minimum threshold in UN will automatically result in

failure to graduate high school, regardless the student’s overall performance during their school

years. As a result, the stakes of the tests have been raised very highly, growing deep concerns of

many schools, teachers, and students.

This paper will explore various impacts of the current national exit examination (UN).

More specifically, it will focus on the impacts it has on some aspects of secondary education,

such as the student’s life, teacher’s life, and school administrators’ life.

Research Questions

The decision of the current government administration to raise the stake of the national

exit examination has raised harsh criticisms from many fronts. Not only that it is considered as a

re-centralization policy, but the requirement of passing the national exam to graduate has caused

a lot of problems for many students, teachers, and school administrators. In 2005, 30% or

400,000 out 1.9 million senior and vocational school students failed the national exam

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(Sampoerna Foundation, 2006). Some high schools even had 0% passing rate. Unlike the failing

students in 2005, the ones in 2006 were not given the chance for a remedial test. Despite the

number decreased significantly to less than 10%, these students were only allowed to take the

equivalency test, called ujian persamaan paket C. If they pass, they can get a high school

diploma, which unfortunately holds a lower status than the regular one. Students are usually not

able to use this diploma for further education. To make it worse, for students graduating from

vocational schools, their prospective employers might reconsider hiring them when they use the

diploma from the equivalency test. This situation has made the national exit exam as the main

focus for many elements in the secondary education in Indonesia at the present time.

This research aims to answer the following questions.

1. What are the main reasons behind the implementation of the current Indonesian national exit

examination?

2. What impacts does it have on students’ life, teachers’ life, classroom life, and school life?

3. Whose interests does the exam serve?

Data collection

Due to the limitation of the research about the topic, as well as the time constraint, the

data will be collected from various online resources. There are three major online sources. They

are:

1. The official website of the Indonesian Ministry of Education, http://www.depdiknas.go.id.

2. The websites of two major newspapers in Indonesia. I will use their search engine, by typing,

“ujian nasional”, and “national exam”, and analyze the data from the first ten result pages.

a. Kompas: http://www.kompas.com

b. The Jakarta Post: http://www.jakartapost.com

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3. Google scholar. I will type “ujian nasional”, “national exam”, and “dampak ujian nasional”,

and analyze the data from the first ten result pages.

Literature Review

Oakes and Lipton (2007) suggest that the current standardized tests use the same

assumptions and procedures as the IQ test design. Tests are designed, administered and scored in

the same fashion. Test-takers are assumed to take tests under the same condition. It is argued that

the standardized achievement tests measure how well students master certain knowledge and

skills taught in schools.

Furthermore, Oakes and Lipton (2007) explain that standardized tests are claimed to be

objective, valid, and reliable. It is objective because it is not open to bias and interpretation, and

the performances can be simplified by statistical figures. Also, all test-takers are perceived to

have an equal and fair opportunity to demonstrate their ability. It is valid because the information

collected and analyzed is perceived to be trustworthy. Finally, it is reliable because the results

are trusted to be consistent.

However, there are critiques towards standardized testing, which have been commonly

ignored by policymakers. Oakes and Lipton (2007) argue that there are three major flaws of

standardized testing. First, it still uses the assumptions of learning theories from the nineteenth-

century behavioral psychology, and does not reflect the rapidly emerging views from the

cognitive and educational psychology. For instance, it is assumed that learning happens when

teacher breaks down the knowledge into small bits of information, which is transmitted by the

teacher to the learners. Second, it inherits the flaws of the logic and technology of IQ tests. For

instance, the presumption of “bell curve”, where tests are designed to produce a wide range of

scores, with most of the test-takers score in the average range, and only few can reach the high

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scores. Third, it is culturally bias. Different cultures have different areas of strengths that are

emphasized. Some value memorization, some value personal and social responsibility. Also,

poverty and oppressive social conditions may influence the test-takers in the standardized tests.

When a standardized test is used as the tool to determine students’ academic future, it can

be considered as high-stakes testing. Janesick (2001) explains that the term ‘high-stakes testing’

refers to the test “for which the consequences of a student’s score are extremely serious” (p.112).

Janesick argues that the high-stakes testing would harm low-income and minority students

because funding would be taken away from the poor-scoring schools. Moreover, listing schools

as failing schools based on the high-stakes testing results would give an impact to the students,

who might consider themselves as failing students as well.

Froese-Germain (1999) also mentions that standardized tests have been used

inappropriately. SAT, for instance, was originally developed to assess students’ potential in their

first year of college in the US. However, we have seen how SAT has been used for other

purposes such as athletic eligibility, student loan eligibility, and awarding scholarships.

Moreover, it has also been used as the criteria to decide student graduation. Darling-

Hammond (1994) suggests that the multiple-choice tests of de-contextualized bits of information

cannot capture the “minimum skills needed for employment and future education in order to

graduate”. Furthermore, she emphasizes, “...the use of tests as a sole determinant of graduation

imposes heavy personal and societal costs, without obvious social benefits.” (p.14)

Findings

The rationale of the policymakers

The Ministerial Decree no 34/2007 stipulates that the main goal of the national exit

examination is to evaluate the graduates’ competence achievement nationwide for certain

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subjects in the groups of science and technology. The results of the exams will be used as one of

the considerations to map education and education program, filter (students) for further

education, decide student graduation, and supervise and assist education units for quality

improvement (Badan Standar Nasional Pendidikan, 2007).

According to the central Ministry of Education, the decision to implement the national

exit examination in its current format has been supported by six studies (“Ujian Nasional,”

2005). From these studies, it was concluded that the national exit exam is needed as a tool for the

central government for measurable educational quality improvement, by improving the teachers’

and students’ performance. Also, the results indicate the societal approval for the exam

implementation. However, the studies, which were done by either the institutions within the

Ministry of Education or the institutions sponsored by the Ministry of Education, did not address

the major issues around the nation-wide exams, such as the direct correlation between the exams

and education quality. It also failed to explain the cheating practices that had happened during

similar exams in the previous years.

Interestingly, there is a strong assumption from the top policymakers that students and

teachers have not worked hard enough, and the pressure of having to perform well in the national

exams will motivate them to improve their performance. For instance the Vice President, Jusuf

Kalla, believes that the national exams will motivate all elements in education to improve the

quality of Indonesian education (“Standardisasi Mutu,” 2005), and also improve the international

competitiveness of Indonesian students (“Lawmakers, activists,” 2006). He also believes in the

importance of standards and uniformity of education system. The Minister of Education,

Bambang Sudibyo, accused the students who failed the national exams as being lazy

(“Depdiknas Pembunuh,” 2006). The Coordinating Minister for the People’s Welfare, Aburizal

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Bakrie, showed a similar tone when he put the blame for the failure of a significant number of

students on the teachers and the students. He also implied that failure in graduation is a sign of

competitiveness. (“Lawmakers, activists,” 2006). Thus, from the data, it is quite clear that the

hidden rationale for the top policymakers in using the national exam is to motivate the students

and teachers to work harder, because they have been blamed for their laziness which resulted in

the low standing of Indonesia in the international ranking.

The impacts on students

The data shows that the major impact of the national exit examination is serious

psychological problems suffered by many middle school and high school students. There are a

lot of indicators for this argument. Students were reported to be worried about their physical and

mental fitness during the test-taking days, which will likely affect their performance during the

tests (“Kecemasan,” 2006). Even the top ranking students also shared the same psychological

stress, and to overcome this feeling, they went to tutoring institutions after school especially in

their final year (“Orangtua pun,” 2005). They still need to have extra tutoring lessons as the pre-

cautionary action in order to sharpen the test-taking skills and strategies needed to quickly and

accurately answer test questions in the multiple-choice paper-and-pencil tests.

In 2006, some top ranking students failed the national exit exam (“UN,” 2006). Despite

scoring 8.2 in her English test and 7.4 in her Indonesian language test, Melati Murti Pratiwi, a

student of SMU 6 Jakarta failed the national exam because she only scored 3.33 on her math test.

The minimum threshold was 4.26. Melati had initially been awarded scholarship to study in

Germany and accepted in an Australian university. Another SMU 6 Jakarta student was Kartika

Paramita Setyorini, who had been accepted to one of the best public universities in Indonesia,

Universitas Gadjah Mada. She had to face the bitter reality when she only scored 3.8 for her

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math test. Like Melati, Kartika scored very well on the other two tests. There are quite a few

similar cases happened with students who normally had very good, if not outstanding, academic

track record, but have to accept the fact that their score in one of the exams is not good enough to

make them pass. Interestingly the exam that has caused a lot of problems seems to be math.

It seems that students have become even more stressed since 2006 when the government

decided to eliminate the option for remedial test. Since then students have only one chance to do

all the tests. Even the sick students did the tests in the hospital (“Final exams,” 2007). It is not

surprising that some reaction of this stress can be quite destructive. Some students tried to burn

their school (“UN patut diduga,” 2006) as a protest to their school for their failure in the national

exams. The frustration and anger of failure in the national exit exam have even led to some

suicidal attempts. In fact, a student in Karanganyar, Bali, was found dead after hanging himself

in his room, the day the national exam results were announced (“Tidak lulus UN,” 2007). He just

failed the national exam.

In general, there is a strong sense that students fear to fail the national exams that they

force themselves to study for the tests as hard as possible. They spend an excessive amount of

time to do the test drills. Even when they have extra lessons for exam preparation in school, they

will still take some extra lessons in tutoring institutions, just to ensure that they are definitely

ready for the tests (“UN digelar April,” 2006).

The impact on teachers

The huge pressure and the high-stakeness of the national exit examination as one of the

decisive requirement for student graduation have made teachers less motivated to be creative and

innovative in designing their lessons. They feel that it is useless to design lessons that are

powerful and engaging, but it is not what is tested in the national exam (“Desakan,” 2007;

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“Standardisasi Mutu,” 2005). The pressure of having to make students pass the exams has led

teachers to teaching to the test (“UN jadikan,”, 2006). What is perceived as more important to

teach is the skills to answer the multiple-choice pencil-and-paper tests (“UN tidak selaras,”

2005). In some cases teachers in the senior year have to spend extra hours after school to teach

students to answer test questions (“UN digelar April,” 2006).

With the fact that many teachers are under qualified, the central government’s pressure to

force the high-quality performance in the national exams also looks unrealistic. For instance,

46.6 % of senior high school teachers are not bachelor degree holders (Sampoerna Foundation,

2006). Moreover the government is only able to cover 6.5 % out of USD 6 billion needed to

finance school infrastructure, such as teacher salaries, books, professional development, etc.

Thus, the huge gap between the capability needed to implement the policy and the reality in the

field has added a huge psychological problem to the under-paid, under-resourced, and under-

qualified teachers.

This situation has probably made many teachers, usually coordinated by their school

administrators, choose to take the short cut in solving the improbable task. A number of teachers

and school administrators have been reported to facilitate cheating practices during the national

exit examination. There are some common patterns used by this collaboration (“Ada indikasi,”

2006). First, before the exam took place, the test questions were leaked to the students. In some

cases the students were asked to come early to copy answers. Second, during the exam, the

answers were given to students, either through distributing small papers, text-messaging to

students’ hand phones, writing on the board, or even reading the answers out loud to the whole

class. Third, after the exam, the exam supervisors revise students’ answers, before the test packs

were sealed and sent to the party who was in charge of assessing the tests.

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There have been a lot of reactions from teachers themselves about these unfair practices.

The ones that had the courage to stand together and get the attention of the media is a group of

teachers from North Sumatra, who named themselves as Komunitas Air Mata Guru (Teachers’

Tears Community), shortened as KMAG. They reported the cheating practices involving school

principals and the local officials of the Ministry of Education, which apparently had happened

since 2005 (“Air Mata Guru,” 2007; “Jika para guru,” 2007). Ironically, they have to face bitter

realities by unfair treatment by their administrators who were involved in the cheating practices.

Some of them have seen their teaching hours were significantly reduced, which makes their

salary decreased considerably, and some others even had to face dismissal. This is similar to

some other cases in other provinces in Indonesia where teachers reporting the cheating practices

were treated like criminals, by being threatened, dismissed, or jailed (“Teachers claim,” 2006).

Impact on school administrators

It is obvious that the decision of making the national exit exam as the graduation

requirement has made school administrators reallocate their school resources to support the test

preparation. For instance, it is reported that the funding originally intended for book subsidies for

the whole primary and middle school students in Indonesia was reallocated to book subsidies for

middle school and high school students in only 12 provinces, which have had very low national

exam scores (“BOS buku,” 2006).

The student performance in the national exit exams is closely related to school prestige.

To ensure that students have the capacity to pass the exams, there are a number of strategies used

by the school administrators. First, they invite the tutoring institutions to come to schools and

teach the students (“Air Mata Guru,” 2007). Second, the practice tests are held as many as

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possible for the students (“Kecemasan,” 2006). Third, the student admission process has been

used as a tool to filter students who are more likely to pass the national tests (Jidi, 2007).

Due to serious lack of capacity - yet the exam results determine school ranking, extra

funding, and local government administration performance - many school administrators have

been reported to orchestrate cheating practices in a number of places. For instance, in the case of

KMAG, the school principals and local officials of Ministry of Education have been reported to

hold a meeting a month before the exams took place (“Air Mata Guru,” 2007). The mission was

to do whatever is needed in order to ensure students from all schools in the region pass the

exams. Answer keys were made prior to the tests. During the tests, the answers were leaked to

the students in a number of ways, sending them through short messaging system on students’ cell

phones, distributing them on a piece of paper, or reading them out loud in the middle of the

exams.

Analysis

The main concern of the government, which has been repeatedly said by the Vice

President, Jusuf Kalla, is to have a standardized quality education system, which they believe can

be achieved through the national exam. The assumption of standardized tests, where everyone

gets the equal and fair opportunity to demonstrate what has been previously learned, might serve

the government’s goal. Moreover, it is claimed that standardized tests are designed,

administered, and scored in the same fashion. This seems to resonate well with what Vice

President mentioned regarding the importance of applying the same norm and procedure in all

regencies in Indonesia in order to develop Indonesian people together (Portal Nasional Republik

Indonesia, 2007).

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It should not be so surprising that the kind of learning that happens in the classroom are

similar to the assumptions of the behavioral psychology’s ones mentioned by Oakes and Lipton

(2007), where learning happens through transmitting bits of information. Teachers have been

discouraged to teach in engaging and meaningful ways. Lessons are geared towards memorizing

the information needed to answer the multiple-choice paper-and pencil exams. Students do

excessive amount of drilling for test practices. In many cases, this kind of learning does not stop

in schools. Students, even the brightest ones, feel compelled to attend tutoring institutions, where

they continue to receive the test-driven drills.

For this matter, the tutoring institutions gain the most benefit, because they will get a lot

of customers, who desperately need the security to get rid of the fear of failing the exam. It is no

surprise that the influence of tutoring institutions has become more dominant in the landscape of

Indonesian education system. They have become government partners in helping students to

succeed in their academic life.

The attitude shown by the Coordinating Minister of People’s Welfare, Aburizal Bakrie,

where having failed students is as a sign of the properly working system, is similar to the

assumption of the bell curve in standardize system. In bell curve logic, the majority of the

participants will get average score, while only some of them get either high or low scores.

However, at the two extremes of the curve, few will have to either do extremely well, or do

extremely poorly. The later one usually refers to failure. This has been the criticism to

standardized testing, where some participants are pre-determined to fail.

The national exit examination fits the description of the high-stakes testing suggested by

Janesick (2001), where the consequences of the test scores are extremely serious. I would argue

that these consequences are burdened not only to students, but also to teachers and school

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administrators. For students, even if they have performed extremely well in school and have

gained prestigious recognitions of their potentials and talents, failure to reach the minimum

threshold of any of the national exit exams will automatically shut their door to step further. This

has caused a major stress to the life of practically every student in the secondary education in

Indonesia, even the brightest ones. The common way of dealing with this stressful situation is by

attending tutoring institutions to have practice drills as often as possible.

The teachers and school administrators have no choice but to comply and deal with the

current format of national examination. The have been reportedly very stressed with the pressure

of making their students reach at least the required minimum threshold for all of the exams. In

fact, the pressure can be a lot bigger because the exam scores are used as the symbol for prestige

for the administrators. They are used as the criteria to determine good quality schools, either by

the ministry of education, or by the general public. They are very competitive about the ranking

of their schools, and will often do whatever it takes to achieve maximum results. Thus, the

consequences of students’ exam scores also determine the life of the teachers and administrators.

When almost half of the Indonesian teaching force are under-qualified, and the

government is only able to cover 6.5 % of the funding needed to build the education system, the

pressure has seemed to force teachers and administrators to take short-cuts to ensure that their

goals are achieved. The serious incapacity to achieve the target results has frustrated many

teachers and administrators that they have decided to use unethical practices to solve their

problem. There are a number of manipulative acts during the exams that have been reported in

different locations every year. To make it even worse, the teachers who reported the cheating

practices were the ones who received the intimidation, and some of them were even dismissed

from their schools. So far, the government seems to be very slow to respond to the reports of

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unfair practices during the national exam. Even the top policymakers, who should have the huge

interest in keeping the trustworthiness of the exam, do seem to consider these reports seriously.

This has sent the message that these practices to some extent can be tolerated.

Conclusion

The national exit examination has caused some seriously damaging impacts to the

secondary education in Indonesia. Students, even the brightest ones, feel fearful that they will

jeopardize their future plans by scoring one point less than the required minimum threshold in

any given exams. Teachers are forced to sacrifice their creative, innovative, meaningful, and

engaging lessons to allow time for students to practice the test drills. School administrators have

to reallocate resources to meet the test-driven demands, even by partnering with external tutoring

institutions to help the students obtain the skills needed to pass the test.

In addition, the huge gap between the needed capacity and the actual capability of

schools to meet the demands of the national exit examination has resulted in serious

psychological distress. There have been a high frequency of reports from the data that students

are very worried and stressed. Some of them expressed their frustration through destructive acts,

such as burning school buildings and committing suicides. A number of teachers and school

administrators have to give up their professional ethics, by facilitating cheating during the

exams, which in some cases involved the officials of the local Ministry of Education.

With the current format, the national exam will do a lot more damage to the secondary

education life in Indonesia. The only parties that benefit from it are the government’s top

policymakers who have a sense of accomplishment with the improved test scores, and the

tutoring institutions who will get the financial benefit from the stress suffered by students,

teachers, and administrators.

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Despite the heavy criticisms from many authoritative scholars, the government seems to

continue their stubborn attitude in regards to national exit examination. The top policymakers,

such as the Vice President, the Minister of Education and the Coordinating Minister for People’s

Welfare have repeatedly insisted on the importance of the national exit examination as the tool to

motivate Indonesian students and teachers to work hard. They seem to believe that the improved

test scores directly correlate with the better quality of education, thus will improve Indonesian

ranking in international assessment.

In the mean time, teachers, students, parents, administrators will have to continue to be

stressed out by the national exit examination. Perhaps, after the coming Indonesian general

election in 2009, with some new top policymakers, there will be some hope to change the

direction of the education policy in Indonesia, particularly the national exit examination. For

now unless an organized and persistent massive movement is done to change the direction of the

current educational policy throughout the country, we will keep hearing the similar stories at

least for the next three years.

I would like to end by repeating a quote from what Darling-Hammond (1994), “…the use

of tests as a sole determinant of graduation imposes heavy personal and societal costs, without

obvious social benefits.” I think this is very true in Indonesian context, especially with the

current national examination, which has resulted in extremely damaging costs, not only for the

students, the teachers, and the school administrators, but also for the society in general, because

Indonesia is losing the chance to provide the quality education for its future generation. It is

indeed a huge cost for Indonesia.

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