Jakarta aims to go paperless for next year's national exams

The Jakarta administration aims to implement a completely computer-based National Examination by next year for efficiency and to lower the potential of materials being leaked as the nation-wide exams start on Monday.

The computer-based test would also help provide a greater variety of questions to students, Jakarta Education Office head Sopan Adrianto said.

"More variety of questions will make the test impossible to leak. It will also save our energy as the paper-based test must be delivered to schools from printing offices outside Jakarta in the early morning," Sopan told journalists on Monday without giving further details about the plan.

Not all senior high school students in the capital have a chance to do the computer-based national examination this year.

The nation-wide examinations for high school students start on Monday to Thursday.

From a total of 133,961 high-school-level students, there are 63,883 from 203 high schools, 167 vocational schools and 10 madrasah aliyah (Islamic high schools) who will take the computer-based exam this year, while the rest will receive the paper-based test.

Difficulties in procuring computers by some schools has hampered the implementation of the computer-based exam in the capital, said Jakarta Governor Basuki "Ahok" Tjahaja Purnama.

"About 47 percent of the school buildings in Jakarta are in bad condition. With the bad buildings, if we have computers, they can be easily broken by the [rain] water. It will be inefficient because we want to tighten the budget," Ahok said, adding that there were 627 damaged school buildings in the city that would be renovated next year.

His administration would carefully select the contractor companies for the school renovations to make sure of the construction.

If the renovations could not be completed next year, then the city would coordinate with several universities in the capital to carry out the computer-based national examinations.

Private universities like Bina Nusantara University had offered to carry out the exams this year and use their computer facilities, Ahok said. However, the city passed on the offers as it was difficult to manage the administration of thousands of students taking the test in a university. (rin)

Source: Jakarta aims to go paperless for next year's national exams