Criticism
National Exam has been subject of controversy since its inception. It became notorious for answer key leakage, cheating, fraud, and corruption. Some argue that the exam is too hard and demanding for students and teachers. Schools are forced to allocate more time for drilling students, putting more workload to both teachers and students.
National Exam fail rate is usually very low. Critics argue that it did not give an accurate picture about Indonesian student's real competency, because of cheating problems and other issues.
The 2010 National Exam fail rate for middle and high school is unusually high. Explanations given of the cause of increase in failure rate attributed to test date in March, giving schools less time for prepare, question difflicuty, and increase in cutoff score. National Examination remedials are held in 2009 and 2010, but abolished the following year.
Some called for the National Exam to be abolished. The Education and Culture Ministry have so far defended National Exam.
There is a site dedicated for groups that try to abolish it. It can be found here.
Exam fraud and cheating issues
Cheating is very rampant, because of the huge pressure to passing the exam. Schools and teachers are either ignoring it, encouraging it, or even do it. Examples include using mobile phones to send answers to other students, giving the answer key, either openly or discreetly, and changing the answer on the answer sheet. School principals and teachers has been arrested on that case.
To deter cheating, National Exam question variation had increased for middle and high school, from one to five in 2011, and from five to 20 in 2013. Other measures are inclusion of barcode in 2013 partly to determine question variation codes and to tackle cheating. Even then, cheating still occurs.
Exam material shortage and quality
In 2013, National Exam for high school are delayed in 11 provinces because of printing and packing confusion and errors. It was attributed to increase of question variation. Schools are forced to self-copy the question papers. Some demanded the then-Education and Culture Minister, Mohammad Nuh, to resign.