Quality education is expensive: Minister

Fri, 05/02/2008 1:45 PM  |  Focus

The ministry of national education has released a report on its performance between 2004 and 2007 and its future plans. Education Minister Bambang Sudibyo talked at length about the report and various education issues during his recent visit to The Jakarta Post. The following are excerpts from the interview.

Question: How do you manage the country's education?

Answer: I'm applying two strategies in managing education. My education background is management -- I was a director of a school of management -- so I am applying modern management to administer the country's education.

The first strategy is determining a focus. I am focusing only on three things: the expansion and even distribution of education access; the improvement of quality, competitiveness and relevance; and the strengthening of management, accountability and the image of good governance.

Second, my strategy is having all things measured. Everything we're doing must be able to be measured. For example, in expansion and even distribution of access, what sorts of measures we use in a five-year period and how much we want to achieve. So quality-wise, probably we have to improve and complete the measures we're using.

We're now kick-starting a system called "measured performance-based management".

Why are you focusing on those three things?

I focus on access because it is a matter of justice. The Constitution states that education is the right of all citizens; so education is a justice issue.

Second, if we evenly distribute or spread education that is of poor quality, how will it develop the intellectual life of the nation? We need quality to educate the nation.

And third, why management? It's because it is the spirit of the reform, which means I implicitly admit there are governance problems in the education sector. It needs to be settled and it won't end in one term of ministerial office.

However, by starting this focusing strategy, it will become apparent where our education is heading. It is impossible if we want everything. Focusing is very important, and this is what many corporations are adopting.

About the recently mushrooming international schools, what's the ministry's policy on them?

The 2003 Law on the National Education System mandates each regency and municipal administration to develop at least one elementary school, one junior high school, one senior high school and one vocational school having international standards.

The local administrations can develop state internationally standardized schools, or facilitate the promotion of private schools into international ones.

Indonesia has 471 regencies and municipalities; it means that we need at least 1,884 schools with international standards. Cities usually manage to develop more international schools. Yogyakarta, for example, is now pioneering the establishment of eight international schools. But many regions have yet to proactively pioneer the establishment of such schools.

The international schools are under the supervision of regency and municipal administrations. But Government Regulation No. 38/2007 has authorized provincial administrations to develop international schools. The central government can also help the development of the schools. Therefore, in practice, the central government, provincial administrations and regency or municipal administrations have their own shares in the development of international schools.

Why does the government opt for the national exam as a basis for students' graduation while it has laid a heavy burden on students and parents? Why can't the exam become merely a tool to map out education quality?

First, if we do not set the national exam as a decisive factor, students will not take it seriously. As a result, the data we obtain would not give a real picture of the students' quality, and we couldn't use it to map their quality.

Second, graduation, in fact, is not determined solely by the result of the national exam. To graduate from schools, students must, first, follow all the learning process. If a student skips class too often, the principal has the authority not to pass the student even without him or her taking the exam.

Second, earn "good" scores in subjects related to right brain intelligence, including religion, morals, civics and personality. We use a qualitative measure here and "good" is the minimum score. So, for example, if a student is proven to be a drug addict, the school should not pass him even if he passes the national exam.

Third, pass the school exam.

And four, pass the national exam.

So, to graduate, students must meet four requirements, not solely the national exam. This means it is tough to graduate from schools in Indonesia; very tough. If this is implemented appropriately, Indonesia will have an outstanding quality of education. But a lot of schools have yet to apply this.

The side effect of autonomy for schools is that school fees become more expensive, especially at the higher education level. How does the government cope with this?

Every policy will go through periods of ups and downs at the beginning of its implementation.

Such a thing will happen, too, with the shift of state universities into state legal entities. But we've begun to see the result now. Of seven Indonesian universities included in the world's top 500 universities, six of them are state legal entity universities.

It is costly to earn quality education. There's no such thing as free quality education. We can see that in socialist countries such as France and Germany, education is free. But look at the list of the world's top 50, or top 100 universities; how many are French or German universities? In fact, universities from the United States and the United Kingdom top the list. Asian countries like Japan, Singapore, China and India have now entered the list. But France and Italy? No, they're not in the list because education is free there. The government has introduced school operational funds as part of school autonomy. Now that there are reports of misuse, will the program continue?

When I launched the School Operational Aids (BOS) program, I knew there would be principals and teachers misappropriating the funds. But not all schools do such things. In fact, there is nothing wrong with most principals and teachers. That's a part of a learning period.

That's why I would not feel sorry for principals who were sent to jail; I had anticipated that such things would occur.

That is what will happen during a learning period; that is democracy. They will learn little by little, and, with control by the community, we will see best practices emerge among these educators.

There is this female principal in Aceh. She wants to be accountable, so she reports the use of BOS funds on the school wall so as to let everyone know what the funds are for and how much is left. There are many of these sort of best practices. Based on that, the director general for the management of primary and secondary education has decided that all schools must announce all use of BOS funds on school walls.

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