'Breakthrough' in Indonesian educational management

The Jakarta Post ,  Jakarta   |  Fri, 05/02/2008 1:45 PM

The government says it has taken "substantial and wide-scale breakthrough measures" in providing and improving nine-year compulsory national education.

"At least nine breakthrough steps were made during the 2005-2007 period," the National Education Ministry said in its latest performance achievement report.

The steps included the massive funding of education, the improvement of education qualification, competence and certification as well the increase of human resources in education.

Among other steps were the application of technology, information and communication (TIK) for e-learning and e-administration programs, the development and reconstruction of education facilities and the substantial reform in textbook supplies for schoolchildren.

The report said the ministry allocated Rp 11.5 trillion for last year's education funding through five programs -- the school operational fund (BOS), textbook procurement aid, student special assistance, the quality management operational fund and scholarship programs.

The BOS was intended to provide subsidies to all state and private schools involved in running the nine-year compulsory education program.

Last year, a total of 35,226,629 students across the country enjoyed the subsidy program, with elementary school students each given Rp 254,000 and junior high school students Rp 354,000, the report said.

"The total fund for the BOS reached Rp 9.8 trillion from the education budget in 2007," the report said.

A survey conducted by the ministry's research and development board said the BOS reduced the drop-out rate from 0.60 percent in 2004 to 0.40 percent after the program was launched in 2005.

However, the survey, as quoted in the report, found "some weaknesses" in the BOS program's implementation, which included providing inaccurate data on the number of students entitled to aid.

No corruption cases were reported by the ministry in connection to the costly BOS program, despite reports from anti-graft activists that the huge fund was liable to misuse.

For the textbook procurement aid program, the government earmarked a total of Rp 595.1 billion in 2007 with all state and private elementary and junior high schools receiving assistance.

Since last year, students taking part in open junior high schools were among the recipients of free textbooks from the education ministry.

The survey said 97 percent of interviewed parents reported the program had helped finance textbook procurement and had reduced their education cost burden.

The government also created a special assistance program for students from poor families to prevent them from dropping out.

According to the ministry's report, the special aid recipients totaled 585,609 students at senior high schools, including 275,000 from vocational schools.

Each of them was allocated Rp 780,000 per year for the 2007 program, it added.

As part of efforts to enhance the academic qualification and competence of teachers, the ministry provided scholarships to 170,000 teachers to attain their university diplomas last year.

Every scholarship recipient was allotted Rp 2 million per year.

A total of 12,065 lecturers were also granted scholarships to finish their master and doctoral degrees. This program cost the government Rp 236.6 billion in 2007.

The certification program begun last year aimed at ensuring that state teachers have pedagogic, professional, social and moral competence.

The program is also being applied to 210,600 contract teachers as the government plans to appoint all of them as civil servants by 2008 at the latest.

Since 2005, the education ministry has applied a TIK-based library network system at 10 state universities and conducted TIK-based learning at 125 senior high schools in 125 regencies across the country.

In the same year, the school information network's capacity was upgraded by replacing the local area network system with a wide area network system.

"Therefore, the user or computer at one location can communicate with those in another area," the ministry said in its report.

The report said that in 2007 the national education network connected its main office in Jakarta with its representative offices in all 33 provinces, 471 regency and municipal offices, 82 state universities, 100 private colleges and more than 10,000 schools.

Development of school facilities was also considered to be part of the ministry's breakthroughs. This covered building new schools, state universities, classrooms, libraries and laboratories.

During the 2005-2007 period, the central government allotted a total of Rp 10.8 trillion from the state budget to rebuild classrooms at 217,113 state and private elementary schools.

"If the rehabilitation fund was spent properly in the regions, the number of damaged classrooms would have been reduced to 91,064, or 9.13 percent, or even less than that," the report added.

The national textbook procurement policy underwent significant changes with the issuance of a 2005 regulation by the ministry.

The new regulation ceased the ministry's monopoly in writing, publishing and distributing textbooks to schools, and instead pushed it to encourage other parties to enter into healthy business competition.

Every school was allowed to choose textbooks approved by the ministry to be used for at least five years.

"This policy is aimed to value education autonomy as mandated by the education system law and ease the financial burden of parents with more than one child," the report said.

The rules were then improved through a 2008 regulation that suggests the ministry, the Religious Affairs Ministry and local administrations "buy textbook copyrights" so as to boost access to textbooks.

The move is to allow anyone to freely copy textbooks, publish and even trade them to the public.

In 2007 the National Education Ministry began buying the copyrights of 37 textbooks and said the move would be continued this year.

Also this year, the government is offering "incentive subsidies" for textbook writers.

A  |   A  |   A  |    |   |    |    |    |  

Copyright © 2008 The Jakarta Post - PT Bina Media Tenggara. All Rights Reserved.