Lack of teachers disadvantages students

It was 10 a.m. in the morning, the time when students were supposed to sitting in their class. That was not the case in SMP 8 state junior high school in Kintamani, the hilly region in Bangli, one of the poorest regencies in the resort island. The school lies in Kayuselem, an underdeveloped village.

Hundreds of students were playing around the schoolyard, teasing their friends and laughing together. Some were sitting in the shade and reading books. There were no learning activities in the school’s three existing classrooms.

“It is a free time. Our teachers haven’t arrived yet,” Wayan Wini, a ninth grader said.

Wini and her classmate should be learning English at that time. Other lessons in that day included civics, geography, and economy.

“It is a common situation for us, the teachers do not show up for classes. It is probably because our school is far away,” Wini said.

“If there are no teachers, most of us spend our time playing in the schoolyard while waiting for the sound of the school’s bell, which marks the end of the day,” Wini’s classmate Luh Sasih, added.

The school’s teacher, Gede Artha admitted that it suffered a lack of teachers.

“We have been experiencing this problem since a few years ago and it has never been solved ,” he said, adding that he had taught in the school since 2008.

He disclosed that the school with a total of 217 students only has seven teachers, out of whom only four are full-time teachers.

“Actually, there were periods when many teachers were assigned to this school by the local administration. Buy they usually stayed for only several months before asking for a transfer to schools in the city. I don’t understand why the administration has allowed the transfers to take place while we are here having a problem of lack of teachers,” he stressed.

The school couldn’t rely on the part-time teachers. The pay is low that most of them have to work at two different places to make end meets. Naturally, they could teach only for a few days in a week.

A part-time teacher makes Rp 5,000 (55 US cents) per day. For Komang Sukarsana, 27, a part-time teacher, the amount is simply inadequate.

“It’s not even enough for covering my transport cost,” the resident of Ubud said, adding that it takes him 1.5 hours of ride to reach the school.

“I’m sorry because I can’t teach every day. I try to teach three days a week. I think it’s enough, so I can do my other work to get additional income.”

The head of Provincial Education Agency Anak Agung Gede Ngurah Sujaya acknowledged that unequal distribution of teachers has become a serious problem in the island. A majority of teachers were concentrated in schools at the island’s major cities while schools in rural areas suffered from chronic teachers shortage.

“Unequal distribution of teachers is our main problem in Bali. We are now in the process of mapping the placement of teachers in all around Bali. We have already found several schools, particularly in rural areas in Karangasem and Bangli suffering lack of teachers,” Sujaya said.

He added that the island actually has a sufficient number of teachers. The Central Statistics Agency (BPS) data showed that the number of teachers in all levels of education in both the state and private schools reached 51,374 in 2011, while the number of students reached 727,734, yielding a ratio of one teacher for every 14 students.

Sujaya added that the authority to transfer the teacher from one school to another lies on the regency and city administrations.

“The provincial administration doesn’t have any authority on the teachers’ placement. But we will try to advise the regency and city administrations to pay special attention to this matter because the problem has reached a worrying level,” he said.