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Education system places victory over quality
The selective system of Indonesian education practically instills in parents the need to make their children score better than others. Otherwise, the children are deprived of the opportunity to enroll in the desired prized school.
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The children from Bupul village, 200 kilometers from the city of Merauke, always went to school with a bright smile on their faces, notebooks in their backpack (or sometimes a plastic bag) and they were all barefoot. (JP/Dita Nurtjahya)
T
he comprehensive schooling system is hardly an issue as far as national education is concerned. There have never been any considerable discussions among stakeholders about this.
Comprehensive system means a model of schooling that does not select students in terms of aptitude. Contrary to those of a selective system, schools are supposed to automatically accept students as long as they satisfy non-academic criteria, such as age and place of residence.
Most industrialized Western nations, including the United States, use the comprehensive model in their state schools. The United Kingdom is in transition toward an entirely comprehensive system, preserving the selective system for its 163 grammar schools — out of some 3,000 statefunded secondary schools.
The bottom line of the comprehensive system is that the state is responsible for equally providing every child with the best education regardless of academic performance.
That said, children need not compete with each other to secure seats in particular schools because every state school is supposed to offer the best.
Here in Indonesia, especially in more prosperous cities, the parents of secondary students — and even elementary students— willingly compete with each other to spend more money on their beloved children’s after-school tutoring.
Learning with a tutor means the children spend more time and effort to swallow hard, supplementary test-taking material already abundant in their school hours.
