Poor students taught to make do

The Jakarta Post , Jakarta | Wed, 06/21/2006 3:38 PM | Jakarta

Theresia Sufa, The Jakarta Post, Bogor

As education becomes an increasingly profit-oriented industry, families on limited incomes lose out.

Some 54 students at the Akademia alternative junior high in Pasir Angin in Bogor, south of Jakarta, are among them.

Their classroom is a vacant lot, half occupied by a local cemetery. They sit on plastic mats, between cassava trees and graves.

And when it rains, they have to cram into the living room of the nearby Al-Anshor orphanage.

""Schools have become business oriented and these students are the victims,"" school operator Dedi Supriyadi said Tuesday.

By attending the free school, students from some of the city's poorest families get a better start in life, partly because a state school in nearby Kranggan, Citeureup, issues them certificates showing they have completed junior high.

There are five alternative schools in the district, but only Akademia holds classes daily. Students of the other schools only go to school on Mondays and Thursdays.

Since most of the students have to work to help support their families, classes are from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m.

""I wanted to go to school. This one costs nothing and classes are in the afternoon, which means I don't have to quit work,"" said 15-year-old Usep Setiawan, one of the students, who also works at the local market.

Usep earns Rp 15,000 a day.

Alternative schools like Akademia offer disadvantaged students a flexible learning environment.

Some schools teach street children basic survival skills.

Of the 29 million school-age children in the country, only 85 percent are in school.

If the government cannot advance the country's education system, more initiative from the community is needed.

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