Schools nowadays absorb much of students’
time.
With
national exams waiting for them in their senior years, they have to sit longer
hours at school and undertake extra classes.
Some
schools give additional learning time to students who have not mastered the
material, while others oblige them to join additional classes several months
before exams.
Piled
up with extra sessions outside school, students can spend almost 12 hours a day
on school subjects in their final years of junior and senior high school.
Some
students even increase their hours at earlier stages.
Clarinda
Reyzihanifa spends around eight-and-a-half hours at school and some four hours
to beat the traffic jam during weekdays. The 11th grader has to arrive at her
school, state high school SMA 24, in Sena-yan, Central Jakarta, at 6:30 a.m.
She
goes home at 3 pm and usually reaches home in Pondok Cabe, Tangerang, at 5:30
pm.
In the
evening, she usually studies for one-and-a-half hours. Sometimes she will spend
more hours on completing her homework.
“Yes, I
am tired, but I kind of get used to this schedule because I have been doing
this since I was in 10th grade,” she told The Jakarta Post.
She
plans to take a private course in chemistry in the next two months in a bid to
prepare herself to face the national exams and next year’s school exams.
Another
student, Farah Andani, says she often sleeps at 1:30 am due to mounting
homework. She complains that some teachers suddenly give her many tasks to
complete in a short time instead of gradually giving a more manageable amount
of tasks.
“When I
have not mastered the given tasks, I will just copy my friends’ work. I wish we
spent more quality time in the classroom on discussing difficult subjects like
biology,” she said.
Since
the government implemented in 2004 a “fail system” for students who achieved
lower than the minimum national exams grades, the fear to fail has increased
sharply along with sparking controversy.
Those
who fail are required to take another senior year or equivalency tests.
The
government has argued that the punitive system is necessary for students to
motivate them to perform and in the end improve the quality of education.
Despite
the rising average grades achieved across the years, the country’s education
profile remains the same.
Eastern
Indonesia and disadvantaged provinces still lag behind the national standard
despite the national examination system being designed to improve the quality
of education.
National
examination results in 2008-2009 showed a high failure rate among high school
students nationwide, with underdeveloped areas, such as East Nusa Tenggara,
Central Sulawesi, North Maluku, West Papua and Central Kalimantan, ranking at
the bottom of the list.
With
many policy changes, the government has maintained the percentage of failing
students below 1 per cent, but the nightmare that has now lasted for almost a
decade still haunts students, parents and teachers.
Last
year, 20,234 or 0.55 per cent of junior high school students throughout the
nation failed the examination. The number of senior high school students who
failed was 11,443 or 0.78 per cent.
In
April this year, 3.7 million junior high school students are sitting the
national exams, while more than 2.5 million senior high school students are
participating in the national exams.
Indah
Setiawati
The
Jakarta Post
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