Indonesian Launches Paperless National Exam at 585 High Schools

Indonesian Launches Paperless National Exam at 585 High Schools
By Vento Saudale

Jakarta. Over 1.5 million high school students across the country on Monday began taking the National Examination, with hundreds of schools using a computer-based system for the first time.

“The preparation for the national exam has been going well … until last night everything went according to the plan,” Education Minister Anies Baswedan said on Monday, as quoted by Kompas.com.

For the first time, the government has introduced a computer-based test at 585 schools across the country, to help save money by practically eliminating printing and distribution costs.

Anies said that the leaking of exam questions would also be easier to prevent with the computer-based system.

Students said the system worked well.

“The questions were downloaded within only a few seconds and we would see two columns, the questions and the multiple choices — we only needed to click on the right answer,” Agung Iqbal, a student at State Vocational School No. 3 in Bogor, West Java, told the Jakarta Globe on Monday.

“If we made a [procedural] mistake, the system would automatically alert us,,” Agung added. “It’s so unlike the manual system, where we spent a lot of time trying to be make sure we wouldn’t make any mistake.”

The ministry says over 1.5 million high school students will take the national exam this week, with another 3.7 million junior high school students expected to take the test early next month.

Despite the system having become more transparent, Anies said that he had heard of rumors in several regions about leaked exam papers.

Though he doubted there was any truth to these rumors he still encouraged students, teachers and parents to report any cheating.

A student shows her password needed to access the national exam questions, at a school in Surabaya on Monday.