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Freedom to learn needs more than teachers
No matter how great the reform of education, including curriculum restructuring to put it in line with the Industry 4.0 era, all will be futile if teachers have no required competence.
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Learning ground: Students of an Islamic school in the East Java city of Malang read books under the guidance of their teacher during an outdoor classroom activity. The digital era requires teachers to exercise creativity in helping students absorb knowledge. (JP/Aman Rochman)
T
he Education and Culture Ministry has launched a list of reforms, called merdeka belajar (freedom to learn), which focuses on student performance assessments, classroom teaching plans (RPPs) and school zoning.
The first reform mandates a new form of assessment by which teachers have more autonomy to formulate school final exams, while the second would abolish the national exam, which is considered to be too material-heavy and too light on measuring reasoning skills.
The third reform would simplify RPPs for teachers, meaning less administrative work for teachers so they can have more time to focus on the learning process.
The last reform would modify the zoning system by reducing the number of seats allocated to students residing near each school from 80 to 50 percent, while increasing seats for those with high academic achievements.
All of these policy adjustments would bring us to the heart of education reform, which is teacher competence and professionalism. No matter how great the reform of education, including curriculum restructuring to put it in line with the Industry 4.0 era, all will be futile if teachers have no required competence.
With regard to the first and second reforms, for example, the new form of assessment that would be determined by the teachers obviously needs teachers to have the ability to comprehensively assess progress regarding both cognitive and emotional aspects of their own students.
Hence, teachers need routine and deep individual observation to detect not only their students’ strengths and weaknesses in learning, but also their mental development, talent and interests.
