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nstead of impulsively throwing ideas with no backup research into the public arena, the culture and education minister needs to focus on resolving fundamental problems in the country’s education system, activists have said.

In the two months since he took office, Culture and Education Minister Muhadjir Effendy has repeatedly sparked public uproar with his ideas, including allowing teachers to impose physical punishment on students, reviewing free-school programs and extending school hours.

Members of the Civil Society Coalition for Education Transformation (KMSTP) said the minister’s approach would make stakeholders in the education sector lose track.

“Education policies have to be based on research and supported by data, not based on the minister’s feelings or his friend’s experience,” said Eka Simanjuntak, a researcher with the coalition.

One of the minister’s controversial ideas was allowing teachers to use physical punishment to discipline students. Soon after his statement was reported in the media, the National Commission for Child Protection met with the minister to voice its opposition to the idea.

Eka, who also works as a consultant for the Institute of Good Governance and Regional Development, said the minister should have known that based on the Child Protection Law, violence against children cannot be tolerated in any form.

The minister’s statements indicate that he is not up to date with the development of education systems in Indonesia and overseas, which have moved toward enforcing a positive environment in schools.

“UNICEF conducts a campaign on positive discipline aiming to eliminate any form of negative punishments at schools,” Eka said.

By fostering a positive environment in schools, he said, students could learn to be responsible individuals, which would help them to obey the rules.

Muhadjir also said recently that he wanted to review the policy providing nine years of free and compulsory education, saying it had hindered public participation in managing and building educational institutions.

In fact, the program provides the opportunity for low-income families to access an education, Ahmad Taufiq, program manager for an education monitoring network, and also a KMSTP member, said in Jakarta.

“The government only provides nine years of compulsory education free of charge. We are pressing them to provide 12-year compulsory education,” he said.

He added that the government seemed hesitant about providing 12 years of education, although it had previously planned to do so.

Muhadjir’s recent plan to add extra school hours for elementary and junior high school students has become a target of public criticism.

Eka said before trying to build students’ characters at school, the government needed to resolve the unequal distribution of good-quality teachers. “Teacher absenteeism rates are still high and many teachers don’t have the competency to teach students; some teach with little preparation,” he said.

 Indonesian Corruption Watch (ICW) researcher Febri Hendri, who is also a member of the KMSTP, advised the minister to encourage public participation in policymaking, like former minister Anies Baswedan.

Eka echoed Febri’s statement, saying Anies had often involved members of the public who understood the matter at hand when creating polices.

“Pak Anies asked us to help in the course of revising the ministerial regulation on fees and donations for education,” he said. (win).