With the working-age population reaching 70 percent of the total population by 2030, Indonesia hopes that the upcoming years will be the golden time to optimize its huge working-age group and maximize its economic productivity.

To reap the benefits of the demographic dividend and participate in Industry 4.0, it is pivotal for Indonesia to have high-skilled human capital. But right now, it is still not looking good.

The World Bank 2018 Human Capital Index, which assesses countries’ future productivity based on their education and health outcomes, ranks Indonesia 87^th of 157 countries with a score of 0.53.

“[The score] means that, on average, Indonesian workers of the next generation will be only 53 percent as productive as they could be under the benchmark of 14 years of learning and full health,” the World Bank said in a report titled “The Promise of Education in Indonesia”.

The education sector has benefited from the largest portion of state budget allocations for over a decade, but data has shown that this has not translated into better education performance among students.

“If the inconsistencies of various components in the education system are allowed to continue, then no matter how much money has been allocated and how long the road has taken, the condition of Indonesia’s education is not going to significantly change,” Shintia Revina, a researcher at the SMERU Research Institute told The Jakarta Post.

What Indonesia has achieved

According to the Wittgenstein Center for Demography and Global Human Capital, the number of Indonesians who go to school keeps increasing every year. The number of people aged 15 and above who attend primary school, for example, has increased from only 7 million students or 21.56 percent of the population in 1950 to 55 million or 24 percent of the population in 2020.

And the number of those who do not receive formal education has dropped from 25 million people in 1950 to only around 9 million in 2020.

The number of university attendees remains low; in 2020, only 10 percent of the population aged 15 and above moved on to higher education while only 0.38 percent have graduate degrees. 

Indonesia has also been successful in eradicating illiteracy. According to Statistics Indonesia (BPS) in 2018 the number of illiterate people in the nation is only 1.93 percent of the total population, a significant improvement compared to 16 percent in 1990 and 57 percent in 1950.

What the country has missed

The ability to read and the fact that more Indonesians are now in schools are not enough when the country still struggles with its learning system.

An Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) report in 2019 showed that Indonesian students score among the lowest in science, reading and mathematics compared to their peers living in 79 countries. Indonesian schoolchildren rank below their peers in most other Southeast Asian countries participating in the test.

Since 2018, the Education and Culture Ministry has tried to improve students’ performance by inserting several Program for International Student Assessment (PISA)-style questions in the national exams that were formulated according to an internationally approved education reform concept, namely the High Order Thinking Skills (HOTs).

The sudden change frustrated students who claimed the questions were too difficult and starkly different from what they had been taught.

The PISA survey also showed that Indonesian students have been trained to follow the teacher’s instructions, diminishing their critical thinking skills due to a teacher-centered learning environment in their primary and secondary education.

Itje Chodidjah, an education expert and a member of the National Accreditation Board for School and Madrasa, said Indonesian children scored poorly in reading and other critical thinking evaluation tests because the focus of classroom lessons was still heavy on rote learning, in which students memorize information and tested only about the given information instead of allowing them to develop critical thinking skills.

“[This is caused by] the limited competence of teachers who are not prepared for [teaching critical thinking]. The development of critical thinking begins with interactive teaching and the learning process,” Itje said on Aug. 7, emphasizing the importance of critical thinking in training and recruiting teachers.

The pursuit of good teachers

Heru Purnomo, the Indonesian Teacher Unions Federation (FSGI) secretary-general who has been teaching for more than 30 years, said most Indonesian teachers now lived more prosperously than ever, but their financial condition did significantly affect their quality of teaching and their students’ achievements.

Finance Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati has criticized teachers on several occasions, addressing the fact that even though more teachers were receiving better pay through the government’s certification program, which began in 2005, the quality of education has not improved. She further expressed her concern that the program might be treated as merely a formal procedure that teachers followed to receive “extra pay”.

Since former president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono’s administration, the Constitution mandates that the government allocate 20 percent of the state budget to education.

This year, the budget for education was increased to Rp 505.8 trillion (US$34.7 billion) from Rp 488.4 trillion in 2019. Around 60 percent is meant to go to teachers’ welfare.

A SMERU Research Institute working paper titled “The Struggle to Recruit Good Teachers in Indonesia” reveals that the main issue plaguing Indonesia’s education system was the absence of coherence in delegating, financing, motivating and spreading information among of every related party, such as policymakers, the ministry, local education agencies, schools and teachers.

Shintia of SMERU said that with regard to the teacher certification program, for example, the government did not review the increased allowance teachers get for obtaining the certificate or improving their performance in the classroom, both in terms of teaching quality and student learning outcomes.

“Currently, the professional allowance is given to teachers who are more experienced and have tenure, not to the teachers who show a better quality of teaching in class,” Shintia said.

Under the current system, no matter how good or poor the teaching quality of teachers, they will still get the same salary and benefits if they are on the same level.

There is also no mechanism to ensure that only the best and qualified teachers are hired as civil servants.

"The required budget to improve these low-competent teachers so that they — at least — could reach the minimum standard determined by the government is not small," Shinthia said.

In 2015, the Education and Culture Ministry held a competence test to map out teachers’ pedagogical and professional competences. That year, 1.6 million teachers took the test and the result was quite shocking as 81 percent did not pass.

SMERU and other education observers urged the government to create a better mechanism that could always link every teaching allowance to the performance of the teachers to make sure that those who are competent and performing better in the classroom receive higher pay.

“This country has been around for 75 years but our education progress is really slow. After the COVID-19 pandemic, I hope there will be a strong political will from national leaders, President [Joko “Jokowi” Widodo] and the ministry to really focus on improving our education quality,” said Heru from FSGI.