In a bid to improve the quality of education at Islamic boarding schools (pesantren), Pasuruan municipal administration has announced a special supervision program for teachers in the city.
The Rp 82 billion program, whose funding is derived from the 2009 city budget, is aimed at improving the quality of teaching provided by pesantren, allowing them to provide education of an equal quality to that given at general schools, Pasuruan education office head Bashori Alwi said.
"We want to have pesantren graduates who are not just well practiced in religious teachings, but who also have skills in science, entrepreneurship and technology," Bashori told The Jakarta Post recently.
With the special program, Bashori expects by 2010 to have 50 accredited pesantren in Pasuruan, able to compete with other general schools in the region.
Apart from the program, the city administration would also give scholarships to pesantren students from low-income families, Bashori said.
The fund would come from the city budget and the city administration-owned zakat (religious obligatory charity) foundation that has allocated Rp 57 million for the scholarship program, he said.
Many have said that since 2005 when the government launched the school operational aid (BOS) fund for public schools, parents have preferred to send their children to formal public schools rather than Islamic boarding schools.
According to state-run SMP 1 Kedamean Gresik headmaster Sutrisno, this was not the case prior to 2005.
Prior to 2005, people preferred to send their children to pesantren because then they were cheaper than other schools in terms of student fees, he said.
With average monthly school fees of Rp 25,000 per student, pesantren students had already received religious science and subjects of formal schools, as well as food and accommodation.
Meanwhile, at formal general schools, student fees could be more than Rp 50,000 a month.
With the BOS fund, however, formal schools could compete to provide better educational facilities, with some providing language laboratories, computers and agricultural cultivation facilities.
Subsequently more parents were choosing to send children to public schools, he said.
"There are some ulema in Gresik who forbade their constituents from going to public schools, but I'm not sure whether this was a result of the trend of parents preferring public schools over pesantren," Sutrisno said.
In 2009 the central government allocated Rp 16 trillion for the BOS fund for elementary and junior high schools - a significant increase from the previous year's Rp 11.2 trillion. Each student receives between Rp 400,000 and Rp 570,000 a year from the fund.
The BOS program on the one hand has improved both the quality and facilities of public schools, but has also created a wider gap between formal schools and pesantren, Sutrisno said.
To help reduce this gap, East Java provincial administration plans by 2010 to provide free education at 6,348 pesantren in the province.
This is to be part the administration's pledge to provide 12-years' mandatory education free of charge for all students.
A Rp 13 trillion fund has been allocated in the provincial budget for this program, including for more than 36,000 schools of elementary to high-school levels.
