Private schools, govt debate subsidies at MK

Two religious-based schools in Central Java are asking the Constitutional Court to review one word of a law to determine if the government should pay for some private schools.

Two Pekalongan-based education institutions, Islamic Salafiyah foundation and Catholic Santa Maria foundation, petitioned the Constitutional Court to drop the word ‘can’ from Article 55 (4) of the National Education System Law.

The article says in part that “society-based education institutions can receive technical support, financial subsidy and other resource fairly from the central government and/or the local administration.”

The foundations believed that the article as written might allow the government to shirk its educational responsibilities.

They said the word ‘can’ in the article should be deemed unconstitutional.

Deputy Education Minister Fasli Jalal told the Constitutional Court on Tuesday why the government could not subsidize private educational institutions such as the foundations.

“If the private institutions receive money from the government it will imply that the educational institutions managed by society are similar to the ones managed by the government,” Fasli told the hearing.

He said that such a policy would erode the identity of societally run educational institutions and require budget increases for education.

“If that happens then the government will spend most of the state budget on education and will not be able to finance other programs, such as welfare,” Fasli said.

Since article 28 (j) of the Constitution stipulated that rights were limited by laws, the government’s position was not unconstitutional, he added.

According to Fasli, funding education was a responsibility shared by the government and society. He said society should fund education, but the government also should give support, such as school operational aid (BOS), educational aid, laboratory equipment, professional allowances to the teachers and new classrooms.

Human rights expert Abdul Hakim Garuda Nusantara, testifying in favor of the foundations, said that the word ‘can’ opened an opportunity for the government to discriminate against private school students, while the Constitution stated that the government should provide its citizens with a basic education whether they were enrolled in public or private schools.

Sulistyo, an education expert, said that the government had to support, but not fully finance, basic education at private schools. A lack of aid has led to low teacher appreciation while the educational system continued to demand that teachers work professionally, he added.

Utomo Dananjaya, another education expert, said that public and private education institutions had a right to government aid since both shaped education in the nation.

The main problem was that the law limited teacher salaries to 20 percent of the education budget, according to Utomo. If the government separated salaries from the education budget it would be possible to finance both public and private schools, he said.

“Other departments and ministries already separate salaries from their budgets. Only the [Education Ministry] still includes it as a component of its budget. The real budget for education is only Rp 60 trillion (US$6.66 billion); with the inclusion of salaries it reaches Rp 200 trillion, which meets the mandated 20 percent of education budget. But it is not the real education budget,” he said.