I just read a Straits Times report about the controversy over whether the national examinations should be allowed to carry on despite a Supreme Court decision upholding a High Court ruling requiring that the Indonesian government upgrade teaching and school facilities nationwide before conducting another national examinations. The courts had made a ruling in response to a suit by a group of parents and students. Also the Jakarta Globe was quoted to have criticized that by going ahead with the examinations, the education ministry or Diknas, was assuming “all students across the country had access to the same opportunities and information, which is far from the truth.” In justifying his Diknas’ rationale for going ahead with the examinations despite the Supreme Court decision, the Education Minister Muhammad Nuh, argued that would be almost impossible to to wait for all schools to be standardised before Diknas can carry out the examinations.

From the controversy here, I think both opposing sides seems to have one thing in common. They both believe in the written examinations that is typical of the national examinations in Indonesia. It is implied in the Education Minister’s argument that the examinations must go on. It is also implied that the people who brought the law suit also believe in the examinations usefulness as they only seem to opposed the unequal opportunities that can skew the examinations.

In my view, both sides are wrong to place such emphasis on examinations in the first place. I have written a lot about this in my blog. Examinations as they are usually carried out are poor indicators of student intelligence and achievement. It does not matter if all the schools and teachers are of equal quality. The problem with examinations is the inherent philosophy and design behind such examinations. For these reasons alone, high stakes examinations should be abolished not only in Indonesia but also for the rest of the world.

I have commented before on the approach to using ICT for education for Indonesian schools. There has always been a a laboratory-centric approach to using ICT. In addition, there is also I believe an unhealthy penchant for a software centric-approach to the use of ICT. In Indonesian schools they actually teach students software like Flash, Dreamweaver or some graphic software like CorelDraw or Adobe Photoshop. It is unclear why this is done except to provide students with a familiarity with such software.

Why? I really don’t know. They believe ICT is important but is it important for students to learn such software? It is important for students to learn to be entrepreneurs. Does it mean that schools teach students specific enterepreneur-related subjects skills? What about other possible career options? Do we teach such subjects in schools too?

The lack of clarity about why ICT is used in Indonesian schools has to be addressed as ICT use in school usually amounts to quite a significant investment by the schools and parents. The North Central Regional Educational Labotory (NCREL) , a leader in the educational uses of ICT has this to say about ICT use in education:

Technology is not transformative on its own. Evidence indicates that when used effectively, “technology applications can support higher-order thinking by engaging students in authentic, complex tasks within collaborative learning contexts” (Means, Blando, Olson, Middleton, Morocco, Remz, & Zorfass, 1993). Instead of focusing on isolated, skills-based uses of technology, schools should promote the use of various technologies for sophisticated problem-solving and information-retrieving purposes (Means & Olson, 1995).

In other words, new technology can be an appropriate vehicle for promoting meaningful, engaged learning. It allows students to work on authentic, meaningful, and challenging problems, similar to tasks performed by professionals in various disciplines; to interact with data in ways that allow student-directed learning; to build knowledge collaboratively; and to interact with professionals in the field. Technologies also can be used to promote the development of higher-order thinking skills and allow opportunities for teachers to act as facilitators or guides and often as a co-learner with the students.

~ Critical Issue: Promoting Technology Use in Schools by Jan Gahala, North Central Regional Educational Laboratory

This approach makes a lot more sense as the focus is on using ICT as a tool to teach the essential skills and knowledge for the 21st Century. It is not to teach ICT per se. What ICT is used for is to support the teaching and learning beyond only the traditional teaching and learning approaches that do not prepare students to take their place in society. This is I believe one of the prerequisites of a world class school. It doesn’t prepare students for obsolescence.

I have read some concerns about the sekolah-sekolah berstandar internasional (SBIs) in Indonesia. One of these concerns is the reduction of the Indonesian identity as a result of the attempted shift towards international educational standards.

I can understand the concerns. I think this is again (as I have been saying all these while) there is a general confusion about what an “SBI” means. One of the most glaring problems that is the result of this confusion is the copying of a model which is perhaps most unsuited for Indonesia. Here I am talking about the Singapore school model that has often been adopted by schools in Indonesia as the model par excellent. This adoption of the Singapore model may be due to a few reasons.

Firstly, it may be due to Singapore’s international reputation for producing “top” students in international olympiads and also in international surveys like TIMSS. Secondly, it is due to Singapore’s proximity to Indonesia which perhaps serve to remind Indonesians of what is lacking in their educational system especially bearing in mind how small Singapore really is in comparison to giant Indonesia. Thirdly, wealthy Indonesians have historically sent their children to Singapore before the financial meltdown of the 1980s for an education and that is the education system they are most familiar with. It is not a surprise therefore that they look to Singapore as a model. Fourthly, the setting up of the Singapore International School (SIS) with its Singapore curriculum in Jakarta, brings the model even closer to Indonesians. The result is a rush to imitate the Singapore system. With Diknas promoting the idea of SBIs, the SIS model is seen as the model to follow for Indonesia. I believe that in general this is no fault of Diknas but more the fault of the owners of such schools which are usually privately-owned schools who have one eye fixed on profits. While making profits is not a sin, owners should be more serious about what education is about.

This blind aping of the Singapore system has meant a few things for these schools that aspire to be of international standards. Firstly, it has led to an emphasis on students taking international examinations like the iPSLE and the IGCSE because that is the nearest equivalent to the PSLE and the Singapore-Cambridge GCE “O” and “A” level examinations done in Singapore. The adoption of these examinations has meant that some subjects traditionally found in Indonesian schools have been given reduced emphasis especially subjects like Bahasa Indonesia and Social Studies with sometimes these subjects being combined. Nobody really stops to ask why international examinations are necessary in the first place. Indonesian students have had no  problems going to overseas universities in the first place without these examinations. They still can with their indigenous educational qualifications.

The second change which is perhaps another reason for the lament about the loss of the Indonesian identity, is the over-emphasis in the use of the English language. Here again there is an unchecked assumption that to be of international standard, a school must offer English as the medium of instruction. For schools like SIS where students take the iPSLE and the IGCSE, English is required as a medium of instruction because the examinations are done in English. Mastery of English is crucial. But some of the National Plus schools in Indonesia who have been touting themselves or planning to be SBIs have also chosen to take the same route. But what the owners have ignored is that, in the SIS model, almost all the teaching staff are very effective expatriate speakers of English. You have a staff of native English speakers supported by teachers from Singapore and the Philippines. Almost all the National Plus schools that want to offer IGCSE don’t have that. They have opted for a token approach with maybe one or two native English speakers. I do not mean any disrespect to Indonesian teachers but teaching in English is a problem for most of them. I am sure Indonesian teachers will agree that if Singapore teachers are asked to teach in Bahasa Indonesia to prepare their students in Bahasa Indonesia-based examinations, it will be pure folly. Using English as a medium of instruction requires a higher English language competency than a TOEFL score of 500. Even then Indonesian schools that aspire to be SBIs and touting the use of English as one of the essentials of SBIs, have great difficulty of getting teachers with that score of 500.

But despite these language difficulties, I believe Indonesians should not think that it is beyond them to get to the level of SBIs. But a re-intepretation of what an SBI is must be done. Perhaps, “re-intepretation” is not the correct term. A return to a proper understanding of what SBI is more accurate. Mastery of a foreign language was never one of the goals set for the SBIs by Diknas. What Diknas wants at the end of the day is a good educational standard where good teaching is done. Schools in Indonesia can set themselves that standard of quality teaching. By quality teaching it means teaching that is relevant to the needs of a modern Indonesian nation who aspires to be a member of this globalized world, yet firmly anchored in its Indonesian identity.

This can be done using the Indonesian curriculum with a lot of re-training for the teachers and some tweaking of the curriculum. Indonesian schools should still use the Indonesian language as the medium of instruction. This is for both nationalistic and pragmatic reasons. Indonesia is not Singapore and I believe the Indonesian schools will be better off as Indonesian schools then as “half-baked Singapore schools”.