Anita Rachman

The school cheating scandal continues with teachers under police investigation for their part in the scandal and the House demanding answers about the scale of the cheating. (Photo: JG)

Testing Body Insists That Cheaters Be Given a Second Chance on Finals

Thousands of students caught up in a cheating scandal will get the opportunity to retake the national final exams starting today.

While the House of Representatives continues to demand an immediate explanation of the circumstances surrounding the scandal in April, the independent body responsible for conducting the tests is giving the students, honest and dishonest alike, a second chance.

Mungin Eddy Wibowo, head of the National Education Standardization Agency (BSNP), which reports to the Ministry of National Education, said on Tuesday that universities and police would be involved in supervising the retesting of the students from 18 junior high schools and 18 senior high schools.

Students from the schools, located in eight provinces, were found to have cheated on the national final exams by filling out their test papers with answer keys supplied by unidentified sources. The answer keys, however, were wrong, which tipped off authorities to the scam.

“We have distributed test papers and answer sheets. We hope that everything will run well,” Mungin said.

The number of schools originally implicated in the scandal was put at 34 senior high schools and 19 junior high schools but the BSNP later revised the figure down to 36, saying only these schools had cheated and the remainder had failed due to a technical error.

Mungin on Tuesday said that those students who failed due to technical errors began retaking their exams on Saturday, denying suggestions that the date was moved up in an attempt to cover up the scandal.

“Because the other 16 senior high schools are in remote areas, high up in the mountains in West Sulawesi, we were afraid that they’d fall further behind schedule if we waited,” he said, adding that the BSNP had not violated any regulations because the 16 senior high schools were among those that failed the exams because of technical errors, such as receiving the wrong test papers from the printers.

Mungin refused, however, to identify the schools involved.

The retest for senior high schools is scheduled to last five days, and four days for junior high school students. He said that students would only be retested in the subjects they had failed.

The cheating was revealed when university supervisors found that thousands of students had written the same answers for the national exams and that all the answers were wrong. The supervisors suspected that the students had used incorrect answer keys believed to have been given to them by teachers or school administrators.

The BSNP has ignored requests by the House to allow only those students who failed due to technical errors the chance to retake the exams.

Mungin said that it was important to consider the psychological state of students. He said that students would be badly effected if some were labeled as cheaters and others as honest.

“We have collected the data,” he said. “We know who cheated and who did not, the House will get the data.”

“But we cannot just reveal the data to the students. It would have an adverse effect on them.”

Mungin said that the BSNP would still punish the dishonest students, but only after they retook the exams, adding that overall school records would be taken into account when considering the graduation status of those students who cheated.

Heri Akhmadi, deputy chairman of House Commission X overseeing education, said that the commission was still demanding all the data from the case. “We want the data. Dishonest students should still be punished.”

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