National Exam (Indonesian: Ujian Nasional, commonly abbreviated as UN or UNAS)[1] was a standard evaluation system of primary and secondary education in Indonesia and the determining factor of quality of education levels among the areas that are conducted by the Center for Educational Assessment of the Ministry of Education and Culture.
The Act Number 20 of 2003 states that, in order to control the quality of education nationwide it is to be evaluated as a form of accountability of education providers to the parties concerned. Further stated that the evaluations conducted by independent agencies on a regular basis, comprehensively, transparently, and systematically to assess the achievement of national education standards and the monitoring process evaluation should be done continuously. Evaluation of the monitoring process is carried out continuously and continuous in the end will be able to fix the quality of education. Improving the quality of education begins with the determination of the standard.
Determination standards continue to rise is expected to encourage increased quality of education, which is the determination of educational standards is the determination of the limit value (cut-off score). One is said to have passed the exam when it has passed the limit value of the boundary between learners who have mastered certain competencies with learners who have not mastered certain competencies. When that happens on the national exam or school then the boundary value function to separate the students who graduated and did not pass is called the limit of graduation, graduation delimitation activities called standard setting.
Benefits of standard setting final exam:
It has been proposed to do a computerized version of National Exam, with trials starting in 2015.[2]
In the same year, National Exam is no longer a standard of education completion as it is stated on Government Regulation No. 13 of 2015. The government policy states that education completion will depend on completing all school learning programs, obtaining at least good on attitude aspect score, and passing the school exam.
There is no cut-off score because the newest exam policy is aimed to map Indonesian students’ competency in every single region in Indonesia. The data are going to be analyzed and will be used to make education improvement strategies in Indonesia. [3]
Originally, the 2020 National Exam was scheduled to be the last, as it was to be replaced by a new format the following year. However, due to the coronavirus pandemic, President Joko Widodo announced the cancellation of the 2020 national examination for all education levels, except Vocational High School (Sekolah Menengah Kejuruan, SMK) that has already been conducted in 47% of the schools in the country. As a result, the National Exam in Indonesia was removed a year earlier.[4][5][6]