TheJakartaPost
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Teacher training a priority
While teaching is a noble job, educators have so far lacked the treatment they deserve.
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E
ven before COVID-19 struck, many had cast doubts over the country’s much-vaunted goal of reaping the full benefits of its demographic bonus due in large part to students’ performance, which continues to lag behind their ASEAN counterparts. And now the pandemic has made the road toward achieving the dream bumpier and steeper.
Certainly, such a sad story will turn the commemoration of National Teachers Day, which falls today, sour. Worse, teachers have to take the blame for the poor state of the national education, despite pressures to meet curriculum demands and the parents’ high expectations for their children to earn a spot in the country’s top universities.
Last year’s Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), run by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), saw a decline in scores from Indonesian students in the three basic skills of reading, mathematics and science. Overall, Indonesia, the largest economy in Southeast Asia, ranked behind Singapore, Malaysia, Brunei Darussalam and Thailand.
On the other hand, a number of Indonesian students have won international science competitions overseas, most recently being Peter Addison Sadhani from St. Aloysius 1 High School in Bandung, West Java, who bagged the gold medal at the fourth European Physics Olympiad (EuPhO) held online in July.
The PISA survey did found a correlation between the students’ sub-par performance and teachers’ competency. When it comes to reading, for example, seven out of 10 students could only identify routine information from short passages and simple procedures, with most students complaining their teachers had not taught them how to tackle such problems.
A recent World Bank report found that none of the surveyed grade 4 teachers at either public or private primary schools under the auspices of the Education and Culture Ministry met the minimum score for knowledge of at least 80 in the Indonesian language, mathematics and pedagogy.
Indeed, regardless of their hard work and dedication, Indonesian teachers are grappling with mounting demand to improve their quality of teaching. It will be unfair, however, to attribute the consistently low scores to teachers. As education expert Totok Amin Soefijanto of Paramadina University put it, Indonesian teachers lack training and their knowledge is never updated.
Fiscal policy, particularly in regions, does not support efforts to boost teachers’ performance either. Another World Bank report discovered that 112 of the country's 508 cities and regencies did not allocate 20 percent of their budget to education in 2018, despite a Constitutional mandate to do so. But even if the education budget reached the compulsory rate, most of the money goes to teachers’ salaries and allowances, with little spent on the training and upskilling they badly need.
While teaching is a noble job, educators have so far lacked the treatment they deserve. The central and local governments have disbursed various allowances to incentivize teachers to perform better, but training is missing from the list. The ongoing pandemic shows that teachers need training to run online classes that engage their students.
Education and Culture Minister Nadiem Makarim has hinted at “a total reform” in teacher training. To show his respect for teachers, he only needs to walk the talk.
