Why Jakarta Is Overhauling High School Academic Testing to Match Global PISA Standards

JAKARTA, Investortrust.id — The Indonesian government has moved to align its national senior high school academic testing framework with international standards, adopting question formats modeled directly on the OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA).

Primary and Secondary Education Minister Abdul Mu’ti stated that the Academic Competency Test (TKA) has been restructured to evaluate analytical comprehension through extensive reading passages and contextual problem-solving, addressing previous student feedback regarding lengthy examination formats.

Speaking after inspecting the rollout of the first test wave at SMA Negeri 3 in South Tangerang on Monday, Oct. 26, 2026, Mu’ti confirmed the strategic shift.

"We also convey that we have adapted this TKA test to the PISA test model," Mu’ti said on Monday. "If there were complaints last year about why the passages were so long, that is indeed how it is designed."

Southeast Asia’s largest economy is confronting a persistent human capital bottleneck as it attempts to move up global value chains. The country’s mathematics score in the 2022 PISA rankings fell from 379 to 366, anchoring Indonesia firmly within the bottom tier of participating jurisdictions and signaling systemic deficiencies in foundational numeracy and analytical logic. Upgrading secondary school testing frameworks and eliminating rote memorization is critical to creating a workforce capable of supporting high-tech manufacturing, digital finance, and complex engineering initiatives.

Rethinking Assessment Architecture

Mu’ti explained that the TKA functions as a standardized evaluation instrument with high statistical validity and reliability, deploying difficulty tiers spanning easy to challenging questions.

The assessment is designed around three core pedagogical objectives: assessment of learning to determine student academic levels, assessment for learning to guide curriculum refinement, and assessment as learning to facilitate continuous instructional improvement.

Under the updated framework, grading systems have also departed from conventional 100-point scales toward standardized international distribution curves.

"TKA is not aimed at determining whether a student succeeds or fails, but rather at mapping educational quality and establishing a baseline to improve the learning process," Mu’ti emphasized.

Breaking Rote Memorization Habits

The systemic urgency of reforming numeracy instruction was underscored by education analyst and assessment reviewer Kurniawan, who argued that lagging PISA scores stem directly from an over-reliance on formulaic memorization.

"It is vital to present challenges that push students out of their comfort zones," Kurniawan said in a statement on Thursday, Dec. 25, 2025. "One effective mechanism is through mathematics competitions designed to test logic, reasoning, and analytical capability."

Kurniawan, who served as committee chairman for the 34th Jakarta Provincial Junior High Mathematics Competition on Dec. 18, 2025, pointed out that 7,320 students across grades seven through nine participated in standardized problem-solving assessments.

Semifinalists and finalists in the municipal program receive formal certifications recognized by the National Achievement Center (Puspresnas), institutionalizing talent development pipelines to ensure domestic education outcomes can compete globally.