National Examination for High School Students Should Be Abolished

National Examination for High School Students Should be Abolished

In some countries, national exam for high school students invites many controversies from different sides. It is a whole new system in education sector, so it has flaws in conducting it. Government thinks that with national examination, it can increase the quality of education. Unfortunately, national exam has few drawbacks. I believe national exam should be abolished based on my three reasons.

The first one and the most important one is national exam is not a proper benchmark tool for measuring students’ academic performances. We cannot guarantee millions of students are doing the exam honestly without cheating. There are some cases where student did the exam honestly but actually failed. According to Lody Paat as cited by Akuntono (2012), he believed that cheating scandals, involving teachers and students alike, have been part of the national exams for years. Beside that, technical failures during checking the result of the exams will lead the students to fail the exam. Also based on many side’s opinion, students have many abilities beside the subject that tested in the exam. For example, students who are talented in music and art.

The second reason is, national exam needs large amount of money to conduct it. According to Head of Education Research Mansor Ramli as cited by Febrina Ayu Scottiati (2011), budget implementation of national examinations and tests in 2011 reached $60 millions. In fact, national exam is affecting country’s budget relatively. Based on that reason, the execution of national exam is not suitable for developing countries, because it is too costly. Apart from that, if government really serious in solving society’s problematic, they can alter the fund to the more needy sectors, such as infrastructures and basic needs. National exam is a huge project, so the possibilities of doing corruption or misallocated funds during the preparation of the exam is very high. If...