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Lingering problems mar education system: CSIS discussion
Education experts bemoan the goverment's inability to come up with a solution to mitigate the risk of a teacher shortage.
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A teacher guides a student on using a laptop for online learning at SMPN 12 Satarmese state junior high school in Manggarai, East Nusa Tenggara. (Courtesy of Google Indonesia/-)
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fter the education omnibus bill was scrapped last September over criticisms of misplaced priorities, educators and analysts are continuing to call on the government to tackle unresolved issues including teacher recruitment, which they fear could cause a teacher shortage that would render irrelevant any changes to the national curriculum.
Since his appointment as education, culture, research and technology minister in 2019, Nadiem Makarim has rolled out numerous policies that have taken many by surprise.
From ditching the national exams (UN) to introducing his own Merdeka Belajar (independent learning) program last year, giving teachers the freedom to structure classes to better suit different learning styles, the novice education minister has made a splash after years of rigid teaching methods.
Merdeka Belajar has seen widespread adoption though it is not mandatory, and its critics focus mainly on shortcomings in the curriculum’s implementation.
However, some experts have deemed the tech entrepreneur’s other policies superfluous, in that they failed to address some of education’s more pressing issues, like the chronic lack of teachers and their poor welfare.
Nadiem said two years ago that the ministry planned to “hire” around 1 million contract teachers, essentially by upgrading informal teachers who were paid honorariums to the status of government contract employees (PPPK). But a lackluster recruitment drive that saw regional administrations constantly proposing far lower teacher quotas than actual needs resulted in just 131,000 informal teachers signing contracts in the last two years.
On Wednesday, Nadiem told the House of Representatives that the government would develop an online recruitment platform for contract teachers next year.
