DISHONESTY IN THE NATIONAL EXAM

National Exam or shortened as NE is the activity of nationally measuring and assessing the competency of students in elementary and secondary education level. National Examination (NE) is held based on the Act No. 20 of 2003 on National Education System. National Examination (NE) is held to nationally assess the achievement of competency in specific subjects in the group of subjects on science and technology. The examination results are used as: 1. Mapping the quality of programs and / or educational unit; 2. Basis of selection into the next educational level; 3. Determination of graduation of students from the education unit, 4. Basic guidance and assistance to the education unit in an effort to improve the quality of education. Originally NE is the first step to determine the level of success of the education and learning process in all areas, so that priority can then be determined to handle educational issues. But the NE has undergone shift of orientation so it is considered as the sole determinant of students success or graduation with a way of fixing a special score as the minimum passing requirement. NE has become the only means of measuring the success of students in taking education. NE is considered unfair because it only measures students' intellectual abilities, which its test only lasts for a few days though students had been studying for 3 years. Besides, has the NE measured the students affective and spiritual aspect? Of course it has not. NE does not reflect the actual quality of the product of education system. But in reality the results of NE, that is the graduation rate is very important for some parties. A school will be categorized as poor if many of its students dont pass the exam, which also affects the Principals position and career of civil service. For regions (district / city, province), NE failure would indicate a low quality of education in the region, which also means less success of program implementation done by the Head of region. For the ministry, the low graduation rate shows low achievement of the government, and 1

the lack of justification for the implementation of the next program. Especially for parents, their childrens failure at the NE would directly result in financial loss to the cost of education as well as a psychological burden for them and the children themselves. Orientation of the NE has once again shifted into simple numbers problem from where all decisions are made. Because the NE is the graduation requirement, students are no longer required to understand, take action or solve problems. The most important thing in school is to pass the exam. Injustice of the NE and various other factors cause students to take the NE in fraudulent or dishonest ways. Head of the National Education Standards Agency (BSNP), Teuku Ramli Zakaria revealed two main factors that lead to dishonesty in the implementation of the NE. In his observations, fraud in the NE was triggered by two factors, namely granting culture, and political pressure. Granting culture happens because these days schools have been used to grant their students. There is a cultural tendency to grant all students. Those who learn diligently and those who dont are granted to pass the exam. Secondly, he said, because of political pressure. It occurs when the Head of the Region gave instructions to Department of Education to achieve better examination results than the previous year, this was passed on to schools. Although the instruction is basically correct, but according to Ramli, education offices and schools often misunderstood it. Department of Education or the NE organizers were forced to be dishonest in order to fulfill these instructions. These are the two factors that encourage the implementation of NE to be dishonest. Various forms of anxiety are also the factors leading to the frauds in the implementation of NE. Among the students there are those who fear before the NE and there are some who just take it easy. On the other hand there are fears of the school for being not ready to face the NE especially for schools that carry out the NE of prime stage. All parties concerned to the UN 'successful', if necessary, by all means. It was common, although with no admittance from the authorities and those who are concerned, that there are a lot of efforts and practices of fraud in the NE, such as:

There were parents who tried to find the leaked questions and answers and were willing to pay a high price. Parents who refused to take advantage of the leak even were excluded.

There were school principals who seek to distribute the leaked questions to students, and others bribed the supervisors to help sharing the answers. There were also supervisors who knowingly gave allowances for students to cheat and work cooperatively. The teachers and supervisors subject to work together to help students during exams. After the examination, empty answer sheets of students were refilled for changing the wrong answers. It is considered as an effective effort to do than to share answers directly to the students during the exam so that the dignity of teacher can be still maintained.

Almost all the NE participants have mobile phones. Distribution of answers can be rapidly done among fellow students via SMS, Facebook or Twitter, and this even can be done just prior to the commencement of examination.

Then why did this kind of business happen? According to the law of economics, where there is demand, there is supply. There are intentions and efforts of the assistance searcher to be mutualized with the opportunities provided by the donor. So far as the writers observation -writer is quite familiar with the problems of education- the stages of implementation of the UN starting from the preparation / compilation of questions, printing, storage, distribution to the schools, the execution in the classroom, the check of answers up to results submission, are vulnerable to fraud. Those who deals with the supervision and inspection processes are those who have concerns as mentioned above, arent they? Like a tit for tat, low integrity can allow all things to be traded. The school and local government can establish cooperation with the central government. Indeed, the truth of this statement is debatable, but evidence to deny it is hard to find, given the reality of fraud that occurs. Frauds been mentioned above are still being conducted until now. These are all examples that illustrate how bad the implementation of the NE is, which is a recurrent disease every

year. Most of the schools especially those in rural areas have not been able to achieve 100% result if the NE was carried out honestly. If we were asked how honest have you been? The writer is sure that now many schools are not ready to reach even a value of 5. This value is not an easy number to achieve for students in honest way considering school facilities and infrastructure are not supported yet. From the writer's observation in schools and according to some students, it is known that the current interest in learning has declined partly because the students are confident that they will pass the exam because of the assistance from teacher, and all the possibility of cheating. Percentage of students success in NE is to determine the schools quality itself so, willing or unwilling; cheating should be done to keep the school form being ashamed among others. The lack of student graduation rate is the benchmark that affects the interest of people to enroll their children into school. When the number of prospective students to register is decreasing, operational support and other manageable operating costs for school becomes lesser and lesser. As we look at the broader context of the education quality, the issue of dishonesty seems to be a heavier burden for the practitioners of education. Quality of Education in Indonesia would not be regardless of whether they, namely teachers, students, other educational personnel, and school, are doing honestly. An honest examination has the implication toward the implementation of the NE every year, due to the presence of the honest NE, barometer of actual quality of education that can be identified and developed. The central and local governments will be able to develop education in accordance with the desired target. However, the school attempts to apply the value of honesty in the current implementation system of the NE remain a great dilemma due to the mentioned interest factor for the sake of the name of school and regional government above. On one hand, the government demands honesty of students in participating NE. But on the other hand, students fight for their rights which is considered to have been "stolen" by the NEs injustice by doing various things, including cheating. This has always been assisted and justified by the teachers and the school. The story was almost like a ritual that can not be separated from NE. As a result, many examinees passed it for their fraud,

instead of their real competence. In terms of statistics and values, schools have a distinct advantage because they have good record in graduating their students. But in terms of attitude, the schools have taught the students to cheat or to be more depending on the assistance provided rather than their own abilities. This is really not worth prouding of. The impact of fraud in the NE implementation can reduce the students learning competence, and therefore contributes to the competence of graduation at national level. Purpose of implementation of the NE is basically good in accordance with Chapter 2 of Regulation of The Minister of National Education No. 34 in 2007, namely to assess the competency of national achievement in specific subjects in the group of subjects in science and technology. The higher the national graduation rate then the success of national education will be concerned on international level. However, the negative impact of this is that learning orientation only bound at the level of graduation or the NE score. Consequently, the learning process only emphasizes the cognitive aspects (development of intelligence or understanding of the subject matter or materials been given in classroom), while other aspects such as the affective (appreciation) and psychomotor (practice) one are neglected. Subjects other than NE subjects are neglected so that they do not seem to be important anymore. If the impression has attached to every student, it will lose the learning interest, whereas other subjects are also no less important than in the subjects tested in the NE. The impression should be eliminated and needs to be invested with the values of the high spirit of learning, because each subject has been set in the curriculum to mutually support one another in order to achieve educational goals, namely transformation in students to a better direction. Therefore teaching conducted should be covering the three aspects mentioned above, namely cognitive, affective and psychomotor. Talking about NE these days is the same as talking about percentage of graduation. Percentage of high school and junior high school graduation in 2012 was fantastic, which is to reach 99.50 percent and 99.57 percent. The number has increased from the last years. NTT province itself is at the lowest rank eventhough its percentage has reached 97 percent. But the arisen question is: have the quality of our education been really

improved significantly as indicated in the above results, considering the equality of educational development, learning media and facilities, improvement of teachers quality and a range of other issues are still to be great homework for the government? The number 99.50 and 99.57 are good results, but in terms of honesty in going through the process of learning, we dont deserve them. If we recall to what happened a few years ago, when the NE graduation percentage was never this high, in fact that it was often unsatisfactory. This is reasonable because the time was when control in the implementation of the NE was still quite tight, advances in information technology had not been abused and the school's desire to pursue the graduation percentage for its own name was not as urgent as present. The irony is that the example of dishonest behavior comes from the government itself. In 2010, the Supreme Court (Mahkamah Agung) issued a decision regarding the NE, which was to ban the NE held by the Ministry of National Education at the time. The reason was that the president, vice president, minister of national education, and head of the National Education Standards Agency (Badan Standar Nasional Pendidikan) were considered to have neglected to fulfill the needs and human rights in education as well as ignoring the improvement of teacher quality. But to date, government continues to implement the NE as the students' graduation measurement. This fact is the evidence that proves the governments dishonesty. In the national education goals, namely the Act of National Education System chapter 3 on Function and Purpose of Education, it is very clearly mentioned that the noble character is the ideal of education in Indonesia. To realize this goal, of course, we all cannot just force the students to do honesty while the government, schools and teachers precisely give a bad example by doing dishonesty against the student and themselves. Prof. Hamid Hasan in his book Suing National Exam said that the quality of education is determined by a quality of learning environment. Quality of environment is shaped by various factors, including those of teaching facilities, learning interactions, learning materials and learning atmosphere. How can we expect the formation of noble character of the students while their environment pointed them to behave dishonestly? 6

The current development of Indonesia's education is not enough to be done by only making propaganda saying "Honest Is Good", but students need good examples in their learning environment. It is the duty of all elements including the government, teachers, school and the society to form a real environment for students in an effort to learn to be a noble human being. Indeed, we realize that every school has a reference to uphold the basic competencies that must be given to the students during the learning process, even tried to take all the ways so that their students can reach the graduation standard. But what is obliged to note is that the learning environment also has a very large role in shaping the mental and personality of the students. Always keep in our mind that goals of National Education are not the non-representative numbers and percentages, nor are the prestige of schools and region authorities, but to create intellectually and spiritually competent students that have the attitude of lofty and noble. *** Reference: Pengertian Ujian Nasional. may 3 2012, from http://ujiannasional.web.id Ujian Nasional: Kejujuran Yang Semu. Accessed on May 3 2012, from http://kampus.okezone.com Dua Pemicu Utama Kecurangan UN. Accessed on May 5 2012, from http://nasional.kompas.com/read/2012/01/02/16195199/Dua.Pemicu.Utama.Kecurangan. UN