ACADEMIA Letters Literacy * Numeracy = Science Dadan Sumardani, Teachers College, National Chiayi University, Taiwan The Indonesian government has just abolished the National Examination (read: UN) in 2020 and replaced it with a Competency Assessment in the form of Literacy, Numeracy, and Science questions (Kemendikbud, n.d.). The UN does have a long history of pros and cons, on the one hand the UN can be used as a mapping of education in Indonesia (Nisa, 2014). On the other hand, in its application, the National Examination is often an arena of unhealthy competition in the form of cheating on the UN scores and manipulating numbers to exceed the UN ‘death’ score (Silverius, 2010). When viewed from the structure, the concept of competency exams for students will be the same as PISA, which tests Literacy, Numeracy, and Science. Ideally, the National Examination is abolished to restore the teacher’s authority in deter- mining learning in schools, because without the National Examination, graduation and stan- dard grades are returned to the teacher so that they can explore what students want to learn. Silverius (2010) stated that the National Examination is very contrary to the spirit of learning reform that is being developed, namely the paradigm of learning models that are more oriented to the achievement of afective and psychomotor abilities, through strategies and learning ap- proaches that are much more fun and contextual, by departing from constructivism learning theory. According to the Ministry of Education and Culture, there are three main reasons for abolishing the National Examination. First, the National Examination is not in line with the educational goals of developing higher-order thinking skills and other competencies that are more relevant to the 21st Century. Second, the National Examination does not encourage teachers to use efective teaching methods to develop higher-order thinking skills. The com- petency assessment as a substitute for the National Examination will be designed to provide a stronger push towards innovative teaching and oriented to the development of reasoning, not memorization. Third, the UN is less than optimal as a tool to improve the quality of education Academia Letters, November 2021 Corresponding Author: Dadan Sumardani, dansu.sumardani@gmail.com Citation: Sumardani, D. (2021). Literacy * Numeracy = Science. Academia Letters, Article 4137. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL4137. 1 ©2021 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0