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ast week, Culture and Education Minister Anies Baswedan returned from his trip to New York to attend the UN General Assembly on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which will serve as the benchmark of global development over the next 15 years. The Jakarta Post'€™s Fedina S. Sundaryani talked with Anies about his plan to implement the SDGs in the education sector. Below is an excerpt from the interview.

Question: What aspects of education were discussed at the UN General Assembly, was the focus only on the SDGs?

Answer: Indonesia participated in two activities [related to education]. The first was the general assembly itself with the adoption of the SDGs, in which the second goal relates to education. Indonesia is a coconvener of what is called the International Commission on Financing Global Education Opportunities.

Although Indonesia faces many domestic challenges in terms of education, we can see that Indonesia is not doing badly in comparison [to other countries]. Especially if we talk about Indonesia'€™s commitment to education; we have committed 20 percent of the state budget and have become a reference for many countries.

Why is this commission needed?

Their assessment, and you can double check the data, indicates that in the past two decades the funding for education has increased as a total figure. However, this occurred mostly in developed nations. If you look at developing countries, the numbers are actually declining [...] there was a 25 percent decline in relative terms. So even though the funds have increased, it has only increased in developed nations and has decreased in poorer countries. The number of education donors has also dropped, so there is some concern that in the long term, the gap between developed and developing nations will widen, because the education quality gap will also widen.

In our opinion, in Indonesia'€™s view, we must assess not just the amount of funds, but how those funds are used. How are they being spent? What is the point of [fund] allocation if the mistakes of other countries are repeated? That was the main discussion that occurred during the New York visit.

What is the plan for this commission in the next few years in terms of increasing education funding and using funds effectively?

The commission is tasked with drafting policies [...]. One of the issues will be the types of assistance that will be offered [by the commission]. I'€™m confident that this will not just be an international convention with a donor-type approach, where they say '€œhere'€™s the money'€. These are people who have been critical about how development programs were put in place, so I think they may come up with new ideas.

The commission itself was just launched, so they will be working on this and will report to the UN General Assembly next year. The reality is that this will definitely draw attention because UNESCO will participate, and other international agencies will cooperate. So I'€™m hoping that this commission will create a report that will become a road map in building global education. A kind of blueprint similar to what the Brundtland Commission was for the environment in the 1970s and 1980s, which became the starting point of the creation of environmental policies. So there is hope in this commission, but we do not have the details yet.

What will Indonesia'€™s role be in the commission?

We can become an example. Not many countries have our experience: we started from a society [...] with a 95 percent illiteracy rate. Today, anyone under the age of 35 is basically 100 percent literate, with a 6 percent illiteracy rate for those above 35 years of age. Now look at other countries that have transformed their society like Indonesia, [there are] almost none. Even in India today, the illiteracy rate is around 30 percent, Egypt is around 30 percent.

Secondly, our nine-year compulsory schooling has been referred to by many others, alongside our ability to have SD Inpres [elementary schools established after a presidential decree issued by former president Soeharto], all over the country. We have around 139,000 elementary schools, much more than the number of villages. There are 74,000 villages [nationwide] and we have doubled that. However, in terms of quality of teachers we still have much to improve.

Furthermore, we can also show the education funding allocation process as we divide it within the central [government] and regional [administrations]. Many countries also experience the same problems we do. If education is wholly managed by the central government then all responsibility falls to it, but now it is divided up between the regions. It should work better but Indonesia has faced obstacles in the form of local politics.

You talk about improving the quality of education, something the SDGs emphasize heavily and hope to improve in the next 15 years. However, as you will be in office for at least four more years, what are your priorities in implementing the SDGs?

What is most crucial for our country'€™s education system is creating an environment, because these SDG education targets can'€™t be reached in a short time. This means that any programs that are initiated in the next few years must be self-sustaining. In order to make it self-sustaining, we must increase interaction. That'€™s why we have explicitly said that our target in the next four years is to shape human capital and create an educational and cultural environment that will ensure the SDGs are reached.

An environment is a place in which each stakeholder interacts with each other and feeds one another. This is the key to interaction.

For example, teachers don'€™t build interaction with their students when they give them learning materials. If a teacher attaches their name, school and contact number to learning material, this creates interaction. This currently does not happen in the education sector and if the public has a problem with something, they head straight to the government.

It is really important for us to build a space for interaction. For example, we want good quality school books, right? However, how are we to improve if you pick up a textbook and find that there is only the author'€™s name and nothing else?

How will the book be improved if the public cannot interact with the author? If thousands of teachers use this book and a teacher feels that there is something wrong with the book, where do they go? You need to create an interactive space for continuous improvement. So our target is to create this environment. It sets the foundation for sustainable change.

We also have to talk about parents. We have made a new directorate named '€œFamily Education'€. [It was established] because teachers and parents must interact; they must question what schools can do for parents and what parents can do for schools. In this directorate, we have prepared materials that have been channeled through schools and classes to parents so that there is interaction.