The amended Constitution demands 20 percent of the government's annual budget be allocated to the education sector. This noble amendment has created more controversy rather than solutions for our educational problems.

The government recently announced further reductions to the education budget. The education budget has been slashed significantly, provoking an outcry from many educational experts as well as grassroots educators who say achieving high standard education is impossible here without having 20 percent of the government's budget.

The recent decision by the Constitutional Court to include teachers' wages as a component of the 20 percent education budget has further outraged many educators in the country. The court's decision made it easier for the government to reach the desirable 20 percent figure without actually adding much to the education budget.

The fact that throughout the current President's leadership the government never once spent a fifth of its budget on education as the Constitution stipulates certainly adds more aversion towards these policies.

In the midst of all this controversy, it seems our attention has shifted from the actual task of dealing with the real culprits that make our education quality so poor.

An improved education system is inseparable from elevating the general quality of life. Hungry citizens cannot think about participating in the compulsory nine-year elementary education program.

Teachers will have a hard time teaching malnourished students. If the electricity service is not reliable, it is impossible to train students to use information and communication technology. Even though we have a fifth of our national budget allocated to education, it will not bring any good if these basic needs remain unmet.

Having a rigid, non-negotiable set allocation of the budget may mean a country can not prioritize important issues it might need to address urgently. In this country, these issues might be providing basic food at affordable prices for all Indonesians and making sure electricity is always available throughout the archipelago.

Such critical issues may need more attention from the government than simply allocating 20 percent of its budget to education, as if by having a fifth of our budget, all the problems in our education system and our country will disappear. Unfortunately, no such panacea exists in this world.

In other countries, the notion of having a set percentage of the state budget for a particular sector may seem unusual and unnecessary. Finland, a country widely accepted as the highest achiever in quality education, surprisingly only spends 15 percent of its state budget on education. In Finland, education comes third in the budget after social affairs/health and finance. In 2006, the United Kingdom only spent a modest 11.5 percent of the government budget on education.

However these countries still manage to provide high quality education for their citizens. While countries like Djibouti and Morocco spend more than 20 percent of their government's budget on education, they seemingly can not be considered role models in their educational achievements.

It is clear that it is not the allocated budget alone that can help a nation achieve quality education. Quality education is a combined result of good public service, the provision of basic needs to citizens and effective management of public funds, no matter how large or small.

Rather than lamenting the cuts in the education budget, fixing the fund management to ensure that whatever is left from the previously allocated budget is used effectively and efficiently seems to be more important in times of national financial difficulty.

The writer is a lecturer at the University of Indonesia and is a graduate of the Postgraduate School of Education, University of New South Wales. He can be reached at agustianeditor@yahoo.com.

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