T

he Religious Affairs Ministry has said that it will start to promote vocational madrassa aliyahs (Islamic high schools) next year, as part of the government'€™s plan to increase the number of vocational schools operating in the country and encourage 12 years of schooling.

The ministry'€™s director of madrassa education, Nur Kholis Setiawan, said on Wednesday that the project would kick off in the 2016 academic year and would be available to begin with in five provinces.

'€œThe vocational madrassa aliyah will first begin in 202 schools in five provinces,'€ he said during a discussion at the ministry'€™s headquarters in Central Jakarta.

Nur Kholis said that the government had prepared at least 10 hectares of land for construction of new school buildings.

No detailed information was given on what kind of training or thinking would be implanted in the curriculum in the vocational schools, but Nur Kholis said that the ministry planned to encourage private madrassa aliyahs to incorporate the teaching of vocational skills.

The Religious Affairs Ministry begun planning the program after learning that many students stopped attending school after graduating from madrassa tsanawiyah, the Islamic junior high school. The ministry aims to give students more options in pursuing higher education.

'€œRight now, the statistics show that out of the 4.14 million students who study in basic education, only 1.1 million continue their studies in madrassas. This does not necessarily mean that they drop out, but they may go to a public school or a pesantren [Islamic boarding school] instead,'€ he said.

Aside from setting up vocational madarassa aliyahs, Nur Kholis said that the ministry also planned to encourage Islamic high schools to focus on sciences and Islamic studies.

'€œWe will be very selective of the students in the last category as they will become our future Muslim clerics,'€ he said.

Public vocational high schools, known as SMKs, allow students to focus on a specific types of jobs, mostly in industry.

In addition to subjects taught at public schools, students at madrassas also learn various subjects as part of Islamic study, including Quran reading, Islamic history and Arabic.

Meanwhile, the Education Sector Analytical Capacity Development Partner (ACDP) said that the Religious Affairs Ministry'€™s biggest challenge would be overcoming their tight education budget.

ACDP researcher Totok Amin Soefijanto said that the Religious Affairs Ministry only received Rp 1.7 trillion (US$123.6 million) from the state budget to manage all 76,551 madrassas nationwide, and only some 3,000 of those madrassas were state-owned.

Some of the schools in fact did not meet the standard minimum service (SPM).

'€œThis [opening of vocational schools] will especially be difficult because, unlike the Education and Elementary and Secondary Education Ministry, the funds for the schools are centralized, which means that it is wholly managed by the Religious Affairs Ministry,'€ he said.

Totok said that one way to improve the quality of madrassas within a limited budget was for the ministry to orchestrate agreements with local administrations and agencies.