I don’t Agree that National Examination to be Continued

Amelia Yunirman

Education is one of the controversy topics at all times in Indonesia.  It seems that we never have good education system even though the minister of education has changed over many years.  One of the main problems in Indonesia is that we don’t have free education from grade 1 to 12 (SD 1 – SMA 3). For me I think that is the most important thing that needs to be changed in order for the country to move forward. I believe that education is the key in having a prosperous country.  It is the basic thing that a country needs to have.

The system of the national exam in Indonesia is bad. Indonesia is a vast country that has many different cultures and islands.  The education system in the villages or remote areas is very different than the ones on big cities such as Jakarta. Yet the government expects the students who live in the remote location to be able to have the same education like in Jakarta. For me, that does not make any sense, because first, you cannot have the same education considering that in Jakarta or other big cities, everything is much more developed. In the villages and remote locations, the condition of some the schools are bad.  Second, students in rural areas get scared when it comes to national exam because the schools there don’t meet the country standards. Third, many students don’t pass high school just because of national exam.

Having been living in the US, I see that there are a lot of education systems that we can implement here. So, eradicate the national exam, instead each schools will have their own standard of how the students should pass high school. So they don’t follow the country standard. Then when you want to go to university, you have to take a national college standard test such as in America is called SAT. So people in rural areas don’t have to get scared when they cannot meet the country standard.