National Exams are A-U-D-F-C-K-E-G

This week, six million grade 12 senior high school students have been undergoing the unnecessary yet ritual torture of 'graduation' tests.

Our Kid is at home today, as are most grades 7 and 8 junior high school students. He'll be at home all next week as well because grade 9s have to go through the same robotic hell, using a 2B pencil to fill in little circles which are scanned by computer.

Unnecessary? Of course they are because the only teaching of 'relevance' these students receive in the preceding months is geared to answering the test questions, many of which are, as I've often noted, badly formulated with possible multiple correct answers or none at all.

The following headlines gleaned from the Jakarta Post tell the tale.

Tuesday 23 March
- Despite 'leaks', first day of national exams goes smoothly.
- Leaks, problems mar national final exam

Wednesday 24 March
- National exams still problematic*

Thursday 25 March
- Schools urged to have post-exam cooldown period
(for students suffering stress.)

Friday 26 March
- Students from across the country to take UGM tests.

Yogya's University of Gadjah Mada will hold entrance exams on Sunday, thus demonstrating that the national exams are of no value in determining who goes on to further education.

*The same problems crop up every year. These include misdirected packages of exam papers, sets of answers being sold, answers being sent by text message, teachers changing students' answer sheets, and students unable to take test due to sickness or pregnancy  and uncertain whether they can take them at a later date. .

Fellow blogger, Harry Nizam, has suggested that my posts are rarely positive but, hey, here's a positive suggestion for the cooling down period.

Let them play games and Countdown, a popular TV game show which tests vocabulary and maths, can be easily adapted for classroom use.

This is a screengrab from Tuesday's show.

The Intelligence(s) of Bureaucrats

It's not just here in Indonesia that the ujian monyet exists.

[In the USA and Canada], students entering university can't read and write properly and are often required to take extra curricular courses during the freshman year of university in order to make up.

...... the system [in the UK] is unsatisfactory. The student may reach twenty years of age and has only been expected to increase his memory. He is not required to think until attempting a Masters. It seems a bit late in the day unless all we are trying to do is provide accountants, engineers, etc., for the commercial system.

That these comments are from an article in the UK Guardian is of little comfort because I do feel bad.

As a parent here in Indonesia, I have to help, and pay for extra help, so my 13 year old son can master test skills, to memorise irrelevant 'facts' decreed by bureaucrats in their offices rather than his teachers at the black or white boards; they are akin to front-line infantry troops who bear the burdens of 'failure' master-minded by armchair generals.

Our Kid's best 'scores' come in unquantifiable 'arts' subjects, Art, Music, and languages (inc. Sundanese) which, apart from English and Indonesian, are not part of the national exams, so he isn't going to become an accountant or engineer.

Most students don't. Or can't.

Many graduates in the UK and here fail to find work in their chosen disciplines, or are 'forced' to work as unpaid interns for 'trial' periods with no hope of permanent employment.

As I and countless others have written, learning how to 'pass' a test is the underlying fault. The tests are made by humans yet are set purely for their ease in marking - by computers. 'Garbage in, garbage out' is an expression not heard much since the early days of personal computing, yet it has never been truer than now.

This trend has its roots in mid-70's at the dawn of the 'free trade-globalisation' era, with the primary aim of turning us all into consumers. Conglomerates are robot tradesmen which aim to sell to ever younger purchasers of their products. (There was a time when comfort was more important than style, so why does Our Kid scorn Adidas trainers in favour of Reebok's?*)

Conformity may have a value in societies governed by rigid, authoritarian regimes, but Indonesia is suffering the growing pains of an emerging democracy with the freedom to express opinions and has no need of mechanised, roboticised, lobotomised 'norms'.

Now that the internet offers boundless information as 'facts', it is little wonder that, much as it may be criticised, plagiarism plagues universities and schools.

Teaching for computerised tests does little to encourage originality of thought or action. Personal experience is a major key to critical reasoning and forming judgements, yet school children are not expected to assume individual responsibility for their actions. They are too busy memorising largely irrelevant information with little context in their daily lives or, indeed, their futures.

Current teachers and bureaucrats were students during Suharto's New Order when dissent was actively discouraged so, although some do, most cannot (yet) be expected to expand and enhance the mandated curriculum, much as they may wish to.

So what is the alternative?

Simply put, it is for society to recognise the freedom to be different, to explore and to be creative. After all, we have different aptitudes drawn from our genetic sources and (hopefully) fostered through our home environments.

In 1983, Dr. Howard Gardner, professor of education at Harvard University, developed the theory of multiple intelligences, a critique of the notion that there exists but a single human intelligence that can be adequately assessed by standard psychometric instruments (i.e. tests).

He originally proposed seven intelligences, later adding 'Naturalist', and more recently a ninth, Existential ('reality smart' - the ability and tendency to pose and ponder questions about life, death, and ultimate realities, generally first manifested among teenagers in their search for identity.)

I've added the possible careers of those folk whose strongest intelligence is as indicated.

• Linguistic (‘word smart’ - writers, public speakers, teachers, and actors):
• Logical-mathematical (‘number/reasoning smart’ - scientists, computer programmers, lawyers or accountants)
• Spatial (‘picture smart’ - builders, graphic artists, architects, cartographers, sculptors)
• Bodily-Kinesthetic (‘body smart’ - athletes, surgeons, dancers, inventors)
• Musical (‘music smart’ - composers, singers, songwriters, music teachers)
• Interpersonal (‘people smart’ - peacemakers, teachers, therapists, salespeople)
• Intrapersonal (‘self smart’ - philosophers, psychiatrists, religious leaders)
• Naturalist (‘nature smart’ - environmentalists, botanists, farmers, biologists)

We each have all intelligences but no two individuals have them in the same exact configuration - similar to our fingerprints. Hence the need for schools, charged with fostering future generations of useful citizens, to accommodate differences and to enable each student to discover and to reach for his or her potential.

A major overhaul of school curricula is required, rather than piecemeal tinkering. I can therefore only offer faint praise to SBY's newish Minister of Education, Muhammad Nuh, who has talked of introducing an entrepreneurship-based curriculum for the 2010-2011 academic year.

He said that the substance of the entrepreneurship-based curriculum would be included in the curriculum of each level of education. [It} would not overhaul the previous curriculum but an entrepreneurship substance would be included in it.

Basically the entrepreneurship curriculum was aimed at instilling entrepreneurship characters to students, including flexibility to think, creativities (sic), innovation and sense of willing to know.
“The first thing that has to be formed with students is flexibility in thinking because this will generate their creativities. One will not be creative if he or she is rigid in thinking.” 

I'll leave it to you to work out which 'intelligence' is manifested by most bureaucrats.
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*Nike apparel is banned in Jakartass Towers until Nike unequivocally confirms that locally-owned factories manufacturing their products conform to the minimum requirements of Indonesian employment regulations. 

Parents demand refunds from school over alleged deception

In September 2008, Sungkono Sadikin wrote a letter to Kompass complaining about the deception practiced by BPK Penabur in its so-called 'International School' in Kelapa Gading, North Jakarta.

I doubt that he received much joy, but then his complaints were centred around the lack of qualifications of the staff and that he didn't get the 'service' he expected as, it appeared, the management were "arogan".

That is not unexpected as this thread amplifies.

Today, I was pleasantly surprised* to read the following article in the Jakarta Post.

Having spent thousands of dollars registering his 6-year-old son at BPK Penabur International School in Kelapa Gading, North Jakarta, in 2008, businessman David Wongso was expecting to see his son’s education handled by professionals, he says.

However, David began to question the school’s credibility over the next few months when he found extensive English grammatical errors in his son’s worksheets from the school.

“Initially I just thought it was typos, but when I saw similar mistakes happening again over the following days I realized there could be something wrong with the quality of the school’s teachers,” he said.

David was among three parents who reported the 60-year-old BPK Penabur institution last year to police for deception.

After registering his son at the institution’s newly opened international school, David said he had felt deceived at information presented in the school’s promotional leaflet and magazine advertisement.

According to the ad and pamphlet, the school held a license from Cambridge University to apply its international curriculum. While the school did employ several native-English-speaking teachers, the claim about the license was not true, he said.

“After we checked the school’s status with the Cambridge representative for the Asia-Pacific region, we were surprised to find that it hadn’t got their official license yet,” he said, adding that he and 17 parents of first-grader students had subsequently requested the school return their money.

David had spent a total of US$5,700 — comprising $3,000 for an entrance fee and $2,700 for 9 months’ tuition.

The request, however, was rejected, forcing most of the parents to keep their children enrolled at the school.

It was only David and three other parents who finally moved their children to another school in early 2009.

BPK Penabur chairman Robert Robianto, however, said it was impossible for the school to return the parents’ money because it was their decision to register their children at the school.

He also denied allegations that the school had no license to run a Cambridge-based curriculum, saying it had secured a license for their international school in Tanjung Duren, West Jakarta, in 2006.

“We also secured [a Cambridge] license for our international school in Kelapa Gading,” he told the Jakarta Post.

Hasyim Widhiarto, Jakarta Post

Three years ago, Ukrida Penabur Internasional, the programme employing expatriate teachers in Jakarta, there were but two qualified school teachers out of  around 16 'teachers'. and not all even had the minimal qualification of a Certificate of Teaching English as a Foreign Language (CTEFL), which takes a mere five weeks to obtain.

Furthermore, Penabur does not have an international school per se. For that, they need approval from the country which sponsors it. In Jakarta, there are British, Japanese, French, German, Australian, New Zealand, Korean and Pakistani International Schools, and probably a few I've overlooked, whose staff may well have diplomatic passports.

It is largely irrelevant that Penabur has a licence from Cambridge University. This only gives permission to use a specific overseas curriculum. There are several good schools which have such a licence, but they are properly known as National Plus schools and to be acknowledged as such should meet the stringent criteria supervised and certified by the Association of National Plus Schools, as well as the overseas licence provider.

Unless Penabur has taken drastic steps in the past three years and grown substantially since establishing "international classes" which were embedded in and used the facilities of the already established schools in Tanjung Duren and Kelapa Gading, then they have no right to call themselves National Plus Schools, let alone label what they do as "International".
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*I say that I was pleasantly surprised only because it enhances my own case regarding the unfair dismissal of a colleague and I some three years ago. We won but are still awaiting the payout awarded by the Supreme Court.

Our lawyers have informed us that Penabur wish to continue their fight against us, even though there is no avenue for appeal, let alone grounds.

Whereas David Wongso is pursuing his case through police channels, we are considering a civil case as we have documentary evidence of visa and contract irregularities, tax avoidance, and intimidation of staff - both local and expatriate - as well as the financial deception of university students.

You would be hard-pressed to find any parents or staff connected with Penabur who do not have a measure of grievance.The few who don't are those whose charges win 'prestigious' prizes in various competitions and do well in the mechanical, knowledge-based multi-choice tests.

WE WON !!

Those of you who have been reading Jakartass for some time will probably remember that I and a colleague were dismissed without notice or due procedure by Yayasan Penabur. I blogged it here.

We took legal advice and employed lawyers to fight our case.

First we went through the channels of the Department of Manpower who found in our favour. Next we went to the Labour Court who, quite unexpectedly ~ except that this is Indonesia and little folk are rarely, it seems, dealt with fairly ~ found in favour of Penabur.

We therefore appealed to the Supreme Court, largely on the grounds that if we lost then each and every expat with a work permit would find themselves at risk in that there would be less legal protection than that afforded to Indonesia's migrant workers abroad.

We have been waiting for the Supreme Court's decision for over a year and today, finally, we learnt that they had found in our favour.

There are fine details to be sorted out so I'm not gloating.

However, I'm sure that all those teachers, parents and former students who have expressed support will be as pleased as we are. Thank you all.

Finally, in another case, Pak Chrismaryadi, School Board Member in charge of Penabur International Schools, wrote as follows: We are fully prepared and willing to stand up and fight for our rights in court. We had done this a few times before and we had 100% strike rate (won all the cases!)Well, now Penabur hasn't. Perhaps it's time that they reconsidered their treatment of employees and accept that this has been remiss in the past.

Fired Penabur Teacher Is Cause Celebré

It would appear that the management of the self-styled BPK Penabur International can't do much right.

Having been accused by a parent of being arogan, they're now facing yet another court case for unlawful dismissal, this time brought by Dr. Walter Tonetto who was hired to be Principal of Penabur International at the head office campus in Tanjung Duren.

He was expected to work on a tourist visa, a deportation matter, he was belatedly paid relocation expenses from Bali, he wasn't been paid anything for the work he did do, and, in spite of protestations from Penabur that he was sent various letters from management requesting a meeting, there is no proof that they were in fact sent.

He was in Bali arranging his relocation.

So they fired him.

You can read all about it on International Schools Review.

Do read the self-justifying Penabur letters citing their 'Christian background' as good enough reasons for doing what they do. It's worth noting that they claim to have a 100% success rate in legal cases.

The Indonesian judiciary has this month been rated as the most corrupt in Asia in a poll of businessmen and, according to Transparency International, Indonesians trust them almost as little as they trust the police.

So, how do you think Penabur achieves such a startling success rate? This blog is now open to all teachers, students and parents who feel they have been wronged over the years by Penabur.

Angry Students Write About Penabur

The following letter has been occasioned by the receipt of emails, over the past two years but several in the past month, from former students of BPK Penabur programmes. I am keeping their names confidential because, as one has written today, "if someone know that I give out this information, Penabur will do something bad for my degree, because as you know Penabur can do anything .... "

It is certainly time for the atmosphere of intimidation engendered throughout the educational establishments of BPK Penabur, among teachers, students - but not, thankfully, parents (see below) - to cease.
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Greetings former students of Penabur.

Many of you may not know that I have been involved in a legal case for two years against BPK Penabur for unfair dismissal. Depnaker (the Department of Manpower) in our favour, but the judge at Pengadilan Hubungan Industrial (the Industrial Relations Court) overturned the ruling, a surprise as this is almost unprecented. We are now waiting for the Supreme Court to overturn the PHI ruling and find in our favour - again.

You can read about the case here in Bhs. Indonesia and here in English:

What is sad, but an indication that Penabur is not well-managed, is that there are many teachers, both local and Indonesian who have been treated badly by BPK Penabur, who have also had to follow the legal route.

I know of teachers, both local and expat, who have ended up in hospital following their very bad treatment by the BPK Board, and of another teacher who had to sell his house in order to sponsor his own visa ~ UPI refused to process his exit permit or pay for the work he had already done.

Not one teacher ever leaves Penabur happy. Happy to leave, yes, but only because of the very unhappy situation they find themselves in, and very rarely, if ever, on mutually agreeable terms.

Not only teachers, but parents and, especially, you have been lied to, generally in the name of 'profitability'. To me, a lifelong educator, I find this to be both cynical and unforgivable, especially coming from an organisation which claims to be Christian. (Remember the story of Jesus and the moneylenders - Mathew 21.)

I have received emails from you, not only expressing disappointment at my dismissal, but also saying that you had misgivings about Penabur.

Some quotes:

1. I hope that you will win the case against Penabur... because my experience as being a student of Ukrida Penabur Internasional for almost three years was completely dissapointing ....

It started from the promises from the board member of UPI association, Mr.Sonny (Hartono). He promised the students that UPI would build a new building 1 year after my enrollment to UPI....but the fact is, there is no one single building for UPI!

Second, I graduated in November 2005 from my high school; one of the reasons why I chose UPI was that they promised that they will open the Foundation degree on Feb 2006. The fact was, they postponed the program until June 2006, ...so they lied to me for the second time....

Third, when I entered, UPI promised us that they will give native and expat lecturers, but we had many more local lecturers rather than native... the comparison is 1 native lecturer and 5 local ones, so we didn't really experience an International Environment like UPI promised to the Students and Parents.

2. All the foundation students don't agree with the increasing for tuition fees .... because at the first time we join the UPI, Chris (the former head of Curtin Uni sponsored programme) said that there would not be any raise. UPI increases the tuition fee, but they doesn't improve the fasilities such as computer access and student lounge ..... The Internet connection is also very bad ..... I don't know why they are doing this to the students.....

3. Our Accounting lecturer was an ex-pilot and had no experience in teaching but there he was.

I heard that Curtin wanted their students to move to Curtin Perth or Sydney on their third year, but UPI refused to cooperate and they said their students have to finish their studies here, unless the students actually wanted to move there. Thus, Curtin decided to cooperate with INTI College here instead.

4. From a former Senior High School student, now working in the USA.
I was disappointed to some of their decisions on P321 and PPBS. Other than that, they do need some serious wake up calls. I really hope you win this case.
(P3-21 -> Program Pembinaan Pemimpin - Abad 21 -> Leadership guidance program for 21st century.
PPBS -> Program Pembinaan Bakat Siswa -> Student talent guidance program.)
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If any of you still have grievances against Penabur, I would like to hear from you and I will respect your privacy and confidentiality. You can email me here.

Anyway, now that you are no longer a Penabur student, I hope that your studies and life are to your satisfaction.

Best wishes.

J
PS. Please feel free to pass this email on to former Penabur/UPI students

An Angry Parent Writes to Kompas

Now parents are beginning to realise that BPK Penabur prioritises income from student fees above educational standards.

Search for 'Penabur' in the Kompas archives and you'll find loads of stories about prize-winning students. Interestingly, the proprietor of Kompas, the respected Jakob Oetomo, started his journalistic career on the tabloid Penabur back in the 50's. That is why I'm surprised at the publication of this letter from a parent.

Dikecewakan BPK Penabur Internasional

Permasalahan diawali saat mendaftarkan anak saya untuk melanjutkan sekolah di kelas VII di Sekolah BPK Penabur Internasional Kelapa Gading, Jakarta Utara, tahun ajaran 2008/2009.

Saat pendaftaran pihak sekolah memberikan spesifikasi/keterangan/janji, antara lain proses belajar berlangsung hingga pukul 12.00 untuk sertifikasi Cambridge saja, atau pukul 14.00 bagi yang mengikuti pelajaran tambahan sesuai muatan lokal.

Guru yang mengajar adalah native speaker atau ekspatriat dengan sertifikasi Cambridge. Jumlah guru adalah dua guru per kelas masing-masing satu guru utama yang native/ekspatriat dibantu satu guru lokal.

Ketika tahun ajaran dimulai saya dikejutkan dengan pelaksanaan belajar-mengajar yang baru selesai pukul 16.35 belum termasuk ekstrakurikuler setiap hari Senin hingga Jumat. Setelah dihujani protes dari para orangtua murid, kemudian sejak 1 Agustus 2008 jadwal diubah menjadi pulang pukul 15.45.

Perubahan jadwal itu dilakukan dengan cara memotong jatah waktu istirahat siswa serta jam masuk sekolah dimajukan ke 07.15 dari 07.30. Lebih parah lagi guru yang mengajar cuma satu guru/kelas dan sebagian besar bukan ekspatriat seperti yang dijanjikan. Bahkan, beberapa guru tidak dapat berkomunikasi lisan secara baik dalam bahasa Inggris sebagaimana seharusnya di sekolah yang menggunakan kurikulum Cambridge dan menyatakan dirinya sekolah internasional.
Dalam perbincangan lewat telepon (15/8), Bapak Yadi dari yayasan dengan arogan menyatakan, memang mulai bulan Maret 2008 telah diputuskan tidak ada lagi sistem dua guru per kelas.

Ini tindakan sewenang-wenang setelah menerima uang registrasi (dibayarkan Februari 2008) sekian banyak terus melakukan perubahan sepihak tanpa mengindahkan janji yang diberikan pada saat penerimaan siswa. Ternyata yayasan/sekolah menghalalkan semua cara untuk mendapatkan siswa.

Sungkono Sadikin
Vila Permata Gading G 17, Jakarta