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Private tuition ‘shortcut’ to top schools, universities
Better together: Students of SMA Taman Siswa senior high school in Kemayoran, Central Jakarta, study together to prepare for national exams in this file photo
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etter together: Students of SMA Taman Siswa senior high school in Kemayoran, Central Jakarta, study together to prepare for national exams in this file photo. Students aspiring to enroll in their dream universities often take extra classes provided by school or private institutions.(Warta Kota/Angga Bhagya Nugraha)
Taking bimbel (private tuition) was normal for Triana Deninta Nurfadhillah or Tia, a senior high school student in Sidoarjo, East Java, who will be enrolling at her dream campus of Gadjah Mada University in Yogyakarta in August.
The 18-year-old spent her senior year taking a three-and-a-half hour classes after school twice a week at one of the most established private tuition providers in the country.
The full-year program, which costs Rp 7 million (US$495), helped her prepare for the national exams and the state university entrance test (SBMPTN).
Tia was by no means a first-timer when it came to bimbel. She had enrolled at the same private tuition provider four years prior, when she was aiming for a spot at a top senior high school in Sidoarjo, and even earlier, when she was in the sixth grade of elementary school preparing to sit the national exams.
“It was exhausting to be honest, but the preparatory classes provided by my school were not enough, so I felt the need to sign up for bimbel. Bimbel also provided monthly mock exams, unlike my school,” Tia said.
She said all of her friends had used similar tuition services, most of them preferring to enroll at those located within walking distance from their school.
One of her friends had even spent Rp 35 million on a more intensive program with the same tuition provider to get into medical school, she said.
“The competition has grown even tighter. Some of my juniors signed up for bimbel classes way before the new academic year started,” Tia said.
Private tuition has long offered a promising way into the country’s top schools and universities, some even charging parents tens of millions of rupiah.
Service providers lure parents and students by employing graduates or students from top universities as tutors. The services are commonly found nearby school compounds or top universities.
These tuition services offer various programs, starting from the lowest priced that offer regular classes of 25 students to intensive camps in which students stay at hotels or apartments to focus on studying for weeks. The latter mainly applies to senior high school students preparing for state university entrance tests.
Sony Sugema College, for example, offers an intensive full-year program for students aiming for the first-tier Bandung Institute of Technology or medical schools at Rp 29 million. Students that fail can receive a refund of up to Rp 8 million.
The college, which has branches in big cities across the country, also offers a “super camp” program, in which students stay at a hotel to study for up to six weeks to prepare for the SBMPTN. The program costs Rp 42 million.
Exclusive tuition provider Lavender, located within walking distance of the University of Indonesia (UI) in Depok, has mainly targeted students from outside Java since it was founded in 2011, although Jakarta-based students have also started enrolling there in recent years.
The provider just wrapped a five-week quarantine program, in which 70 students stayed at a four-star hotel and studied every day from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. with the help of around 60 tutors — mostly UI graduates — and with limited access to phones or the internet. The students came to prepare for the university entrance tests from various regions around the country, including Papua, North Sulawesi and North Sumatra.
The program charged Rp 59 million and if students failed to get into their dream school--mainly medical schools or the University of Indonesia, parents could get up to Rp 15 million back.
“There is still a jarring gap between the number of students, the number of state universities in Indonesia and these universities’ annual quotas. Students from outside Java have this mindset that they must prepare for state university entrance tests in Java, because they don’t have such access [in their hometowns],” Lavender founder Galih Pandekar, an UI graduate and lecturer, told The Jakarta Post recently.
A 2017 report by the Education and Culture Ministry showed that the country had 1,263,211 senior high school graduates that year.
Meanwhile, data released in the same year by the Research, Technology and Higher Education Ministry revealed that 470,838 new students were enrolled in 122 state education institutions comprising 63 state universities, 13 institutes, 43 polytechnics and three community colleges.
The mushrooming of private tuition services is a serious concern for education expert and member of the National Accreditation Board For Schools and Madrasa, Itje Chadidjah, who said that high-priced tuition would worsen inequality among students as only the privileged could have better access to top state schools and universities.
The problem was made worse with local administrations focusing on improving these top schools instead of schools that lacked quality resources, she said.
“State schools are public goods. Every student, not only the smart ones, should have equal access to quality education,” Itje said.
She added that the growing business showed that exam results were prioritized over the learning process, hence students resorted to “shortcuts” and lacked other necessary competencies.
“Schools should start improving their quality to prepare students for higher education,” Itje said.
As part of its efforts to empower teachers, the Education and Culture Ministry has opened the online portal Rumah Belajar, which provides, among other things, free learning materials and mock exams for all levels of education. Teachers are expected to use the portal during classes, but students can also access it by themselves.
As of 2018, the site recorded 343,999 registered student users, 120,705 teachers and 55,317 schools, data from the ministry shows.
“We expect 50 percent of the country’s 52 million students, from elementary to senior high schools, to register with the site,” the Communications and Information Ministry’s technology center head, Gogot Suharwoto, told the Post.
He added that the site could help students who might not be able to afford private tuition, especially those registered under the Indonesia Smart Card — a program that aims to aid students from low-income families, which amount to 35 percent of students nationwide or 18.7 million students as of 2018.
