National Examination in Indonesia: A review of an assessment policy

8/10/2019 National Examination in Indonesia: A review of an assessment policy

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/national-examination-in-indonesia-a-review-of-an-assessment-policy 1/14

1

A REVIEW OF ASSESSMENT POLICY : THE NATIONAL

EXAMINATION IN INDONESIA

INTRODUCTION

Over the last few years the education sector has become the development target in

Indonesia. There has been a lot of policy development aimed at reforming the

education system in Indonesia. Firman & Tola (2008) highlighted three main

focuses of the government in order to enhance the quality of Education in

Indonesia; equity and access improvement, quality and relevance enhancement

and management and accountability empowerment. The country-level

assessment —National Examination of Indonesia has become one of the

manifestations of the quality improvement of Indonesians education focusing on

the systems applied in this external assessment. However, this government policy

has become one of the most contoversial policies that have provoked criticism

from society. Pros and cons of the government policy towards this assessment still

emerge concerning the validity of the assessment result. Therefore, this paper will

attempt to provide a review of the assessment policy. The first part of this paper

will present a description of the issues of the Indonesian National Examination

Policy in relation to the purpose of assessment, stakeholders and accountability,

and moderation of assessment. Then, the recommendation will be offered in order

to solve the problems.



2

SUMMARY OF NATIONAL EXAMINATION POLICY IN INDONESIA

The National Examination of Indonesia serves as an external public assessment for

primary and secondary students. It is set by the National Standards Agency on

behalf of the National Ministry of Education in Indonesia. This national

examination also aims at assessing students’ standard achievement of particular

subjects throughout the year of schooling. Therefore, the content or item of the

subject being assessed is taken from the content standards from each year of

schooling. In addition, this assessment is often seen as a basis for determining if

students are eligible to graduate or to issue school leaving certificate.

The basis of the National Examination policy in Indonesia is the enactment of Law,

number 20 of 2003 on the national education system, which stated that

educational evaluation is a control, assurance, and determination of the quality of

each education level nationally for the educational administrator accountability.

Therefore, according to this law, the policy of this national examination highlights

the use of this assessment as a quality control of the educational practice in each

level of schooling in Indonesia in order to endorse the accountability of the school

administrator to stakeholders including National ministry of Education, district

education agency and parents. Additionally, the major indicator to enhance the

quality of education in Indonesia is the assurance of high quality outcomes for each

education level through a set of assessments that can ensure that graduates will

leave school with competences predetermined by the national standard of

education and curriculum.



3

The national examination system has undergone some amendments concurring

with the rapid change of the curriculum comprising the design of the test items,

test administration, number of subjects tested, and success criteria. According to

the writer’s experience, in 2009, the minimum averages of all subjects tested for

graduation has increased from 5.25 in 2008 to 5.50 in 2009, with minimum grades

set at 4.25 for each subject, however, the minimum score of each subject has been

decreased to 4.00 and it is no longer determined by the national examination

result, but by a formula which accumulates the national examination result (60%)

and the school-based average score of the subjects tested collected from semester

1 to semester 5 (40%). For example, a student obtains a score of 6 in English and

the average grade from semesters 1 to 5 is 8, the formula used to obtain the score

for graduation is (0.6 x 6) + (0.4 x 8) = 6.8, which means that this students has

obtained the minimum standard score of the subject and there graduation will be

determined by their achievement of the minimum average score of all subjects,

which is 5.50, after the accumulation using above formula.

EXAMINING THE NATIONAL EXAMINATION POLICY IN INDONESIA

The Purpose of Assessment

The ultimate purpose of all type of educational assessments is to evaluate students’

learning in order to enable “assessment -based inferences” (Popham, 1999).

Furthermore, Black (1998) highlighted that educational accountability and

feedback to monitor and improve students learning are examples of different



5

which schools that are in need of improvement and support, then this assessment

will still be able to meet the policy purpose without sacrificing students in terms of

success or failure in their school graduation. These accountability issues will be

discussed more in the next session.

Furthermore, the nature of assessment is defined as a process of collecting

information about students’ learning (Nitko & Brookhart, 2011; Bennett, 2009;

Brown & Abeywickrama, 2010). However, given that this National Examination is

designed to assess students’ cognitive aspect through multiple-choice methods, it

does not seem to satisfy the purpose of the policy in which is to evaluate students’

fulfillment of the national standards because in the national curriculum, the

national competency standard is comprised of three different aspects—cognitive,

psychomotor, and affective. Consequently, this led to the overemphasis on testing

which means the overall teaching and learning process seems to be directed to

meet the standard assessed in the national examination. For example, in my own

experience, in some schools, remedial and additional session beyond the regular

classes prepared for providing the students with the sample of test items collected

from the previous years as well as teaching the students the “trick—shortcut ” to

complete each item of the test.

However, the purpose of the national standards has been claimed to be resolved

since 2011 with the recent formula of success criteria enforced by the government

through the new policy, as mentioned earlier, has accommodated the role of the

school and teachers in the process of determining students’ graduation. This new



6

method of accumulating the final result has given opportunities for the school-

based assessments to contribute to the decision making of the graduation. Also, it

means that schools, teachers and students in particular, will now be able to see the

interconnectedness of their teaching practice as well as students learning by the

results of the national assessment, which serves as a summative assessment. By

this I mean, teachers and students now have seen that the learning process from

semester 1 to 5 has significance in decision making towards the graduation.

Stakeholders and accountability

Nitko & Brookhart (2011) argued that accountability testing is required for

assessments that need the educational administrator to be responsible in assuring

that students satisfy the criteria of curriculum learning standards. Furthermore,

Linn (2011) argued that the educational test and accountability differs regarding

the use of the assessment results, the consequences, subjects to be assessed and

the consideration of students’ socioeconomic status. Wragg (2001) stated that

appraisal of different groups in assessment is seen as a part of accountability and

has become controversial utility of assessment. Similarly, the pitfall of the

accountability system in the National Examination of Indonesia is that it attempts

to look for the comparison of students’ absorption of content standard in different

areas in Indonesia in order to see which schools and provinces are in need of

support. However, the test construction designed by a writing team from the

central government who fail to consider the context of some schools and the socio-

economic status of students in some areas in Indonesia including the rural area in



8

and learning. Therefore, it is unlikely for the government to report the concrete

quality mapping, as the result of the assessment is inaccurate.

Moderation

Roberts (1996) defined moderation of assessment as a consensus that

accomplished between raters or scorers dispensed on students work. The purpose

of assigning moderation for assessments is to improve the equality of students’

assessment by diminishing the discrepancy of marking the test items (Gilmore,

Santiago & Sammons, 2012). Moderation of assessment allows the enhancement of

assessment reliability as well as enables teachers to ensure the assessment meets

the students’ learning needs. In the Indonesian National Examination policy, this

moderation procedure is not explicitly elaborated. There are no explicit guidelines

of the moderation process aiming at achieving the reliability of the assessment.

As mentioned in the module of the examination procedure issued by the board of

National education standards, the marking process is executed by using computer-

scanning system (Badan Standar Nasional Pendidikan, 2012). In fact, all the

students’ examination papers are sent to the central government to be processed

for marking and the raw result of the assessment will be reported to the district

education agency, schools and teachers accumulated with the school-based

assessment for final result. The new policy that enables school-based assessment

result to be combined with the external assessment results is considered as a part

of moderation in order to achieve fairness. This policy aims at reducing the

significance of the external examination results to the decision of issuing a school-



9

leaving certificate for the students. Elley & Livingston (1972) pinpointed that

several countries such as Canada, New Zealand, and England, have already

endorsed the moderation system by adding internal assessments—school-based

assessments into the public examination results to provide opportunities for the

teachers’ judgments. Additionally, Elley & Livingston (1972) argued that by

applying such moderation and combining both internal and external assessment

result, the more valid result will be achieved and it will be more acceptable.

RECOMMENDATION

Factors that influence the emergence of public critics towards the Indonesian

National Examination which have been discussed in the previous sections are

mainly about the content and the equivalence of instructional process with the

assessment and unfairness of implementing equal evaluation procedure for

students from different contexts—unequal support for the teaching and learning

process. These factors focus on one aspect to be achieved, which is the educational

accountability. Therefore, the government needs to take into account the

particular context of schools to be assessed. Regular inspections need to be

executed in schools in order to ensure that prior to designing of the assessment,

the board of the national examination will have a notion of different contexts and

resources utilised in the instructional process of the national standard. By doing

this, the test item will represent the knowledge that has been taught and students

will be able to see the equivalences of their learning process with the assessment.



10

In addition, the scoring process also needs to be revised to endure that the validity

of the assessment result is achieved. The government needs to reconsider the use

of the computer scanning system. If there are difficulties to cope with the large

amount of students from all over, then decentralisation of the scoring process or

handing over the scoring process to the province or district educational authority

should be taken into account. However, the local education agency should assign a

team of scorers that are well trained and qualified in order to ensure the

objectivity and validity of the assessment results.

Finally, reducing the importance of the external examination by revising the

formula is likely to reduce the stress of teachers and students prior to the

assessment. The weight of school-based assessments should be equal with the

external assessment because the role of the instructional process through internal

assessment should not be peripheral in deciding students’ graduation, instead

vital. By doing this dishonest actions will be preventable. Therefore, accurate

quality mapping will be able to achieved ensuring that educational accountability

is concurring with the instructional improvement (Popham, 1999).

CONCLUSION

In conclusion, the national examination policy has been released aiming at

controlling and assuring the quality of educational practice in Indonesia

concurring with the national standards employed in the prescribed curriculum set

nationally. Over the last few years, the government ’s policy of the National



11

Examination has changed conforming the critiques and issues surrounding the

practical implementation of the examination including the controversial use of

result to meet the accountability purpose and determine the school leaving, the

equivalence of instructional process with the examination, and the moderation

enabling the fairness and validity of the assessment results. In order to cope with

these issues, the government needs to take into account the actions such as regular

inspections and scoring formula revision, prior to the examination to

accommodate the schools’, teachers’, parents’, and students’ needs.



12

REFERENCES LIST

AERA, APA, NCME. (1999). Standards for educational and psychological testing.

Washington: AERA. pp 137-150.

Aisah &Rofiq (2011). Analisis kebijakan Ujian Nasional tingkat Sekolah Menengah

Kejuruan (SMK). Edukasi, 3(1), pp. 75-92.

Bennett, R. E. (2009). A critical look at the meaning and basis of formative

assessment. Education and Testing Services unpublished report ETS RM ‐09‐

06.

Black, P. J. (1998). Testing: Friend or Foe? Theory and practice of assessment and

testing . London: Falmer Press.

Brown, H. D., & Abeywickrama, P. (2010). Language assessment: Principles and

classroom practices (2nd ed.). New York: Pearson Education.

Badan Standar Nasional Pendidikan (2012). Prosedur operasi standar (POS) Ujian

Nasional pendidikan kesetaraan tahun 2012. Retrieved July 2, 2013 from

http://bsnp-indonesia.org/id/.

Elley, W. B., & Livingstone, I. D. (1972). External examinations and internal

assessments: Alternative plans for reform. Wellington: New Zealand Council

for Educational Research.

Firman, H., & Tola, B. (2008). The future of schooling in Indonesia. Journal of

International Cooperation in Education, 11(1), 71-84.

http://bsnp-indonesia.org/id/

http://bsnp-indonesia.org/id/



13

Gilmore, A., Santiago, P., & Sammons, P. (2012). OECD reviews of evaluation and

assessment in education. Czech Republic: OECD Publishing.

Badan Penelitian dan Pengembangan, Kementrian Pendidikan dan Kebudayan

(2013). E-reporting Ujian Nasional. Retrieved from

http://118.98.234.22/sekretariat/hasilun/index.php/hasilun.

Linn, R. L. (2001). The design and evaluation of educational assessment and

accountability systems. Center for the Study of Evaluation, National Center

for Research on Evaluation, Standards, and Student Testing, Graduate

School of Education & Information Studies, University of California, Los

Angeles.

Nitko, A. J., & Brookhart, S. M. (2011). Educational assessment of students (6th ed.).

Boston, MA: Pearson.

Popham, W. J. (1999). Where large scale educational assessment is heading and

why it shouldn't. Educational Measurement: Issues and Practice, 18(3), 13-

17.

Roberts, L. (1996). Local Assessment Moderation in SEPUP . Retrieved from Google

scholar.

Wragg, E. C. (2003). Assessment and learning in the secondary school . Routledge.

http://118.98.234.22/sekretariat/hasilun/index.php/hasilun

http://118.98.234.22/sekretariat/hasilun/index.php/hasilun



14

National Examination in Indonesia: A review of an assessment policy

Documents

Transcript of National Examination in Indonesia: A review of an assessment policy