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here have been several reports and opinion pieces in both the Indonesian and English language press recently concerning the competency test for teachers. Characteristic of the opinion pieces are the interview with professor HAR Tilaar (Suara Karya) and the article by Setiono Sugiharto (The Jakarta Post), both from
Aug. 4 and both highly critical of the new test.

Professor Tilaar questions the legal basis for the test, claiming that the core legislation (the 2005 Law on Teachers & Lecturers) gives responsibility for teacher development to the educational universities (LPTK). This law is indeed quite clear as to who is responsible for what.

The universities are responsible for developing the required competencies (paragraph 23), whereas responsibility for guaranteeing continuity of competence lies with the government (paragraph 24). Identifying precisely where strengthening will have most effect is merely a matter of efficiency. Identifying the extent of the teachers’ knowledge of what they are required to teach is an obvious part of that process.

Setiono Sugiharto questions the ability of a written test to capture the complexities of classroom performance. But the competency test does not attempt to do this. It does what it says and what a written test can do best, identifying the knowledge which underlies and motivates performance.

As such it is part of a more comprehensive program of performance appraisal linked to continuing development of that performance and which includes interviews with teachers, observation of work in school, inspection of lesson plans and teacher’s journals, concluding with a signed agreement between assessor, teacher and school principal.

This program is being progressively introduced during 2012 and 2013 in line with the legislation on which it is all based. In developing and delivering this system, the Education & Culture Ministry is fulfilling its proper function of implementing properly legislated government policy.

It is academically legitimate to question for example, whether the various versions of the competency test have been adequately trialed to ensure that the sample which any test takes is representative of the whole, or whether the nearly 200 different versions needed to cover all subjects taught in Indonesian schools are equivalent in standard.

It is however, surely neither constructive nor productive to recommend, as the above writers do, that the Ministry abandons its efforts to help ensure that every child in Indonesia receives the quality of education he or she is entitled to?

Tony Crocker
Jakarta