Minister of Education and Culture Emphasizes TKA is Not a Formal Program that Will Disappear Jalan

JAKARTA - The Minister of Basic and Secondary Education (Mendikdasmen) Abdul Mu'ti emphasized that the Academic Ability Test (TKA) is not a formality program so that it will not be disbanded even though its first implementation received input due to a number of violations.

He said that a number of violations and input and criticism from the public were considered reasonable to be the material for his party's evaluation in organizing TKA in the next academic year.

"Even though there are some deviations here and there, it's normal. It's like people playing football, there are also those who are given yellow cards, but that doesn't mean that when someone is given a yellow card, the match is disbanded," said Mendikdasmen Mu'ti in a Media Briefing on Academic Ability Tests in Jakarta, Monday, December 22, reported by ANTARA.

He also emphasized that TKA is not a formality program that will dissolve in the middle of the road, but rather an evaluation program that has been prepared and improved over time to assess and convey the academic achievements of students in an accountable manner.

"We show that this TKA is not a formality program, but it is a program that we have prepared with sincerity to assess and convey to the public the academic achievements of students. Well, there are problems later that can be discussed, the number and type of which are actually very few," he added.

Mu'ti explained a number of inputs and criticisms received by his party from the public regarding the first TKA held some time ago.

One of the inputs was that the difficulty level of the questions was considered too difficult and the form of the questions did not have any resemblance to the sample questions during the try out.

Meanwhile, another input is the duration of the TKA work which is considered too short, with a large number of questions and difficult questions.

This condition, he said, makes students get a small TKA score, even ugly for some subjects, such as mathematics and English.

"There are mothers who cling to me and say, 'Sir, it's about the questions that come out that have not been taught in our school, sir,' that's it," or the second one, there are also critics, for example, there are critics of the time is too tight, too short, even though in the test we are carrying out there is a theory, right," he said.

Mu'ti also promised to be ready to thoroughly evaluate the input and criticism to improve the implementation of TKA in the next academic year.

"Well, because of this various criticisms like this, we also hear, we also try to evaluate, including there is an evaluation from the Inspector General," he said.