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Educators want govt to hold off on omnibus education bill
Teachers’ associations say the government should focus on addressing the more urgent problem of learning loss instead.
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Full capacity: Students attend a full, in-person class under health protocols at SD 15 Pagi state elementary school in Mangga Besar, West Jakarta, on Jan. 19. (Antara/Muhammad Adimaja)
T
he Education, Culture, Research and Technology Ministry is drafting a new omnibus bill to regulate the national education system, but teachers’ associations say the government should focus on addressing the more urgent problem of learning loss instead.
The sweeping bill seeks to modernize the country’s education system, supplanting the 2003 National Education System Law, as well as provisions in the 2005 Teachers and Lecturers Law and the 2012 Higher Education Law, among others.
The ministry is hoping to see the bill passed into law next year, and it has been already listed as a priority for the 2020 to 2024 legislative period.
But representatives of educators’ groups, many of whom attended a Feb. 10 discussion on the bill hosted by the ministry, said the moment was not right for the government to spend its time and resources on making an entirely new law, particularly when the pandemic had brought the issue of learning loss to the forefront of the country’s education problems.
“[Dealing with pandemic learning loss] is something that must be understood by all education stakeholders. [We] need to seriously and urgently deal with these learning problems that have resulted from the pandemic,” Indonesian Teachers’ Association (PGRI) deputy secretary-general Dudung Abdul Qodir said on Tuesday.
For much of the pandemic, schools have been caught in a policy dilemma between in-person and distance learning, as health protocols have periodically required schools to go online despite inadequate access to digital devices.
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