TheJakartaPost
Please Update your browser
Your browser is out of date, and may not be compatible with our website. A list of the most popular web browsers can be found below.
Just click on the icons to get to the download page.
Less is more: Shorter school week answer to Indonesian students’ poor performance?
Indonesian Child Protection Agency (LPAI) chairman Seto Mulyadi recently made headlines for his suggestion of shortening the school week to three days to boost children’s academic and nonacademic performances
Change Size
I
span>Indonesian Child Protection Agency (LPAI) chairman Seto Mulyadi recently made headlines for his suggestion of shortening the school week to three days to boost children’s academic and nonacademic performances.
He made the statement only days after the release of an Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) report that revealed a declining performance by Indonesian students in reading, science and mathematics.
Seto — popularly known as Kak Seto — made the suggestion based on his experience with two schools that he cofounded.
The students of Homeschooling Kak Seto (HSKS) in South Tangerang, Banten, only spend three days a week in school. Yet, Seto found that the homeschool students generally performed better than the children who studied from Monday until Friday at Mutiara Indonesia International in Bekasi, West Java.
“Homeschooling with a shorter school time allows students to develop their talents like dancing and singing elsewhere. So, there is a balance between academic and other activities,” Seto told The Jakarta Post over the phone recently.
Among the HSKS alumni are actress Prilly Latuconsina, musician Abdul Qodir Jaelani, the son of singer and composer Ahmad Dhani, and young racer Ali Adriansyah.
Seto further revealed that the HSKS alumni managed to get into the country’s top state universities, including the University of Indonesia, Gadjah Mada University and the Bandung Institute of Technology.
Cutting the school time from the current five-day school week might be regarded by many as counterproductive as it would reduce students’ opportunities to receive instruction in formal education institutions. However, various studies suggest otherwise.
Researchers at Georgia State University and Montana State University, in the United States, found that shortening the school week to four days appeared to have a positive impact on students’ academic performance, particularly in mathematics.
“We find a positive relationship between the four-day school week and the percentage of students scoring at the proficient or advanced levels on math and reading achievement tests,” said the study published in the journal Education, Finance and Policy in July, 2015.
In the past few years, numerous school districts in the US have decided to give students and teachers Fridays off to save costs, among other reasons.
“Policymakers and school administrators will want to take these findings into consideration when weighing the costs and benefits associated with the four-day school week,” the study further said.
Meanwhile, child and adolescent psychologist Alzena Masykouri stressed that the key did not lie in the length of school time, but more in the learning process at school.
Longer school times will not be an issue if teachers apply “correct and effective methods” in class to improve students’ understanding.
Alzena says that teachers, for example, can use the experiential learning method, which focuses on the process of learning through experience.
“One example of experiential learning is learning through observation and interacting with children’s surroundings,” Alzena said, adding that children would be exhausted if they were obliged to sit passively and to listen to their teachers for hours.
The majority of formal schools in Indonesia, particularly state schools, implement conventional ways of “lecturing children” throughout five to seven hours per school day.
School-aged children, as Alzena suggested, have an attention span of only 10 minutes. Therefore, teachers need to combine the learning process with various activities to keep the students focused.
Alzena also encouraged parents to allocate enough time for their children to develop their hobbies and to take a nap.
The latest PISA report — which measures the ability of 15-year-olds in science, reading and mathematics — showed a drop in the performance of Indonesian students.
According to the report, the Indonesian students’ mean reading performance score of 371 in 2018 marks a 21-point decrease from the 2015 score and puts Indonesians far below the OECD average of 487.
In mathematics, Indonesian students got an average score of 379, a seven-point decrease from 2015. Meanwhile, the mean science score was 396 points, a drop from 403 points in 2015. Both scores were also significantly below the OECD average of 489.
In summary, out of 79 assessed countries and economies, Indonesia ranked 73rd in mathematics, 74th in reading and 71st in science.
Education and Culture Minister Nadiem Makarim said the results were “valuable input for evaluating and improving the quality of education in Indonesia”.
“We have to have the courage to change and improve. In accordance with the President’s directive to create great human resources, we will continue to try and make breakthroughs,” he said in a statement on Dec. 3.
