Education budget to hit a record high in ‘09

By Erwida Maulia and Aditya Suharmoko

The government announced on Friday it would raise the education budget to a record-breaking Rp 244.44 trillion (US$26.6 billion) in 2009, a major leap from Rp 154.2 trillion it claims to have allocated this year.

In his speech before the House of Representatives’ plenary session, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said the government was set to increase overall spending by 13.4 percent to Rp 1,222 trillion in 2009, 20 percent of which would be allocated for education.

“The education sector remains the government’s top priority. During the last few years, the National Education Ministry has always received a higher allocation of the budget than other ministries,” Yudhoyono said.

“Alhamdulillah (praise to God), amid the global oil and food crises that have adversely impacted our economy, we’re able, for the 2009 budget, to meet the 20 percent education budget as mandated by the Constitution,” he said.

The Constitutional Court has three times found the government and the House guilty of violating the Constitution for setting education spending lower than 20 percent of the state budget.

In 2006, the government allocated only 9.1 percent of the state budget to education. Education spending accounted for 11.8 percent of the budget in both 2007 and 2008.

Yudhoyono attributed his government’s ability to fulfill the constitutional mandate to the lately declining crude oil price, which lowered fuel and electricity subsidies.

The President, however, did not go into details about what constituted the education budget.

He has proposed an 18 percent increase in the National Education Ministry budget, to Rp 52 trillion in 2009 from Rp 44 trillion this year. An additional Rp 46.1 trillion for education will be taken from the budget reserve.

In a bid to increase education spending, the government has since last year incorporated teacher salary into the education budget, despite protests from the education community.

“The budget will be disbursed, for example, to rehabilitate school buildings and construct tens of thousands of classrooms and new schools,” said Yudhoyono.

Separately, Education Minister Bambang Sudibyo said the improvement of teacher welfare and the quality of vocational schools would top the ministry’s agenda.

Lawmakers Lukman Hakim Syaifuddin from the United Development Party (PPP) and Cyprianus Aoer from the Indonesia Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) welcomed the government’s plan to increase the education budget.

However, they urged stricter supervision of the budget.

Cyprianus said the House was still questioning the details of the whopping education allocation, and planned to seek clarification from the education minister immediately.

He said if teachers’ salaries, as the Constitutional Court ruled in February, were included in the education budget as opposed to civil servants’ expenditures, the government would already be allocating more than 18 percent for education this year.

“If that is so, nothing changes then. The education budget will actually increase only by 1 percent,” he said. (The Jakarta Post)

Govt to allocate Rp 224 t for education

The country’s education sector is set to receive a lump sum of Rp 224 trillion (US$24.64 billion) or 20 percent of the total state budget for 2009, the government said Friday.

“What’s is left now is organizing the exact fund allocation since the education sector doesn’t just cover the Education Ministry, but also the regions as well,” State Minister for National Development Planning Paskah Suzetta told the press at the House of Representatives on Friday.

He added that there is a possibility of increasing the total sum allocated to education as the crude oil price forecast decreases from $120 to $100 per barrel.

President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono pledged an average salary increase of 15 percent for civil servants and retirees next year, making Rp 2 million the lowest monthly salary for teachers.

The move is in line with the government’s recent effort to improve public services, which will take the form, among other things, of a 16.4 percent budget increase allotted for state employee salaries.

“Government officials and retirees’ income will increase through a 15 percent raise in basic salary and retirement fund,” Yudhoyono said.

The President said the government would also begin implementing a 13th month salary and retirement scheme, alongside retirement payment reform.

“The Rp 46.1 trillion fund allotted for education will be used for teachers and researchers’ pay check, meaning the minimum salary for a teacher will be Rp 2 million per month.” (The Jakarta Post)

Government and Intel ink deal to promote e-learning

By Desy Nurhayati and Primastuti Handayani

The classroom full of fourth graders was busy with their Classmate PCs when teacher Hary Pujianto told them to get ready to answer five multiple-choice questions on their respective computers.

Ignoring the children’s cries, Pak Hary immediately clicked the mouse and the students had two minutes to finish the quiz on their PCs.

“After two minutes, we can immediately see their answers. The grade also comes out immediately,” Hary said, pointing to his laptop.

It was a simulation by Menteng 03 state elementary school’s computer laboratory. The school received Classmate PCs from Intel Corp. as part of the company’s cooperation with Indonesia’s Education Ministry to boost e-learning in the country. Gunung 05 elementary state school received similar assistance.

On Thursday, Intel signed agreements with Education Ministry on the Intel World Ahead program.

Intel, the world’s largest computer processor manufacturer, has committed to help the government by providing affordable PCs with its latest generation of microprocessors in a move toward greater access to the Internet for students.

After the signing, chairman of the board of Intel Corp., Craig R. Barrett, met with President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono at the Presidential Palace to discuss the US$200 personal computer program that will support the education sector in lowering the PC-to-student ratio from 1:3,000 to 1:20.

“We discussed with the President the prospect of low-cost PCs with our next generation of microprocessor that will be released in June. We’ll be working with Indonesian manufacturers to produce the PCs,” Barrett said after the meeting.

Presidential spokesman Dino Patti Djalal said the President appreciated the cooperation between Intel and the government and expected the low-cost PCs to be available soon for Indonesian students.

He said the President’s meeting with Barrett was a follow-up to last week’s meeting with Microsoft Corp. founder Bill Gates, during which they discussed free software for the low-cost computers.

“The President is very glad the government is able to move on its plan to procure computers for educational purposes at $200 per unit,” Dino said.

Communication and Information Minister Muhammad Nuh said the government invited local computer manufacturers to produce the low-cost PCs.

Earlier, Education Minister Bambang Sudibyo said Indonesia hoped to provide 20-unit computer laboratories in every school in the country by 2016.

“With affordable computers like Classmate PCs it will cost a school about Rp 50 million (US$5,405) to set up a computer laboratory. In the long run, we hope each teacher and each student can have their own laptop,” he said.

To support the move, the Education Ministry has been developing local content, facilitating schools and universities to develop their own content and developing e-books.

Barrett said Intel has started to donate 4,000 PCs in Indonesia over a four-year term, with 625 units given away to 33 schools this year.

“Intel has also targeted to teach 10,000 teachers in Indonesia this year through our Intel Teach program. The teacher is the one who makes magic. The computer is just a tool. How to use the tool is more important,” he said.

To optimize the use of computers, Barrett named four important keys, namely accessibility, connectivity, local content and education enhancement.

“Indonesia should accelerate the number of Internet subscribers as the Internet penetration in the country is less than 10 percent with the number of those having access to broadband just 2 percent. And it is still expensive,” he said.

Fourth-grade students Amanda and Venna said they could use the Classmate PCs not only to search data and browse websites.

“We can also chat with our friends and play games,” they said.

Hary said the students were eager to start e-learning and “they are reluctant to leave the computer lab even after the session has finished”. (The Jakarta Post)

Looking into the future of national education system

By Mochtar Buchori

A friend asked me recently what I thought about the future of education. “Do you see any encouraging signs? I only see depressing signs,” he added. “I am very worried about our education in the future.”

I told him the situation was not that bad. True, there are many depressing signs, but there are also some encouraging ones. Look, for instance, at the growth of “elite schools” in the country. The number of such academically respectable schools has been continuously increasing. And what is also encouraging, is that these schools are spread throughout the country.

They do not only exist in big cities, like Jakarta, Bandung, Yogyakarta and Surabaya, but in small towns as well, like Kediri, Kudus and Padang Sidempuan, for instance.

And look at our high-school students who have won awards and championships in various international scholastic competitions. They do not only come from elite schools in big cities and well-to-do families; many of them come from good ordinary schools in small towns and ordinary families. These are encouraging facts. They are national achievers and prove the progress in our system. We should open our eyes to these achievements.

Overall, there are good things and bad things about our education system. The question to ask is not how our education system will be in the future. Instead, we should ask the following question: What must we do now to ensure we will have an education system to serve the interests of the people and the country in the future?

In this context, I agree the future of our education is indeed bleak. And this bleak picture will become reality if we do nothing to correct the present shortcomings in our system.

What is most frightening to me about our future is the millions of ill-educated Indonesians who will have to live next to and compete against a much smaller group of well-educated Indonesians, who, for practical reasons, will prefer to work with equally well-educated ex-pats.

In this kind of situation, coupled with the probability of a modernizing Indonesian economy, there will be a very uneven playing field in the job market. The group of well-educated Indonesians will wrest all high-paying jobs, while the large group of ill-educated people will be considered unemployable in the modern sector. They will be employed in menial jobs or in family businesses.

This will be a very dangerous situation that can easily spark social explosion. You don’t have to be a communist to understand inequality in economic life has always been the source of social jealousy, which in turn constitutes the source of social explosion. And it is not difficult to imagine educational disparity will in time create economic disparity.

Can this specter be averted? It can, provided we introduce corrective measures into our present education system now. We should take measures designed to reduce the gap between elite schools and disadvantaged ones.

Essentially, these corrective measures should create an educational system providing affordable, high-quality education to all children from all socio-economic backgrounds. I must add this is a very difficult national task to carry out for all of us. It requires very close cooperation among all parties concerned and it will take a long time to accomplish. By my estimate, if we start to introduce these corrective measures now, it will take another ten to fifteen years before we can see the emergence of a more democratic climate in our system.

Another important question to ask is: What do we mean by “good education” or “quality education”?

Most define “good education” in terms of excellence in academic learning alone. This definition fails to cover the important non-academic aspects of education, like character building for instance. True education is everywhere in the world. It is a systematic attempt to teach the young about life. This means three things: first, to guide the young to learn how to make a living; second, to guide them towards a meaningful life, personally and collectively; and third, to encourage them to contribute to the ennoblement of life.

It follows from the educational paradigm that academic learning alone will not suffice to make a “good education”. The ability to live meaningfully and to ennoble life needs many other things beside academic matters. In good schools that strive to expose children to comprehensive education, Professor Phenix’s recommends guiding students to explore the six realms of meaning in life, which are the symbolic, empiric, aesthetic, synnoetic, ethical and synoptic. Viewed within our conventional academic education, we cover only two areas — the symbolic (language and mathematics) and the empiric (natural and social sciences).

With such limited education, it is very difficult for most students to develop a meaningful life and to contribute to the ennoblement of life. They have to learn many other things on their own to be able to live meaningfully. They have to learn on their own how to acquire wisdom in addition to knowledge and skills.

This is the rough sketch of the job we have to correct the shortcomings in our education system today. We have to make sure we are not heading towards an Indonesia where human life is reduced to repetition just to stay alive and nothing more.

The writer holds a PhD in education from Harvard University. (The Jakarta Post)

Wanted: Humane education

Ing ngarso sung tulodo
Ing madyo mangun karso
Tut wuri handayani
(In front, giving example
In the middle, building work
In the back, giving support)

These three Javanese sentences are from Raden Mas Soewardi Soerjaningrat, who later changed his name to Ki Hadjar Dewantara, and whose birthday, May 2, 1889, we celebrate as National Education Day.

Before stepping into education, Ki Hadjar Dewantara was active in politics through organizations including Boedi Oetomo, whose establishment on May 20, 1908, we celebrate as National Awakening Day.

Because of his writings in 1913, critical of the Dutch ruler, he was exiled to Bangka Island, and later to the Netherlands. Upon his return, he established the educational institution Tamansiswa on July 3, 1922, which would later be regarded as the foundation of the national education system.

As we celebrate National Education Day today, it is worth reflecting once again on the history of our education and its development, and to see what we can do to “raise the intellectual capacity of the nation”, as stipulated in the preamble to the Constitution.

Looking at the figures, we would be proud to see the massive improvements made from the time of Ki Hadjar Dewantara, when education was the realm of the chosen few, to our present time, when most of the nation has access to education.

The biggest improvement of all was recorded during the New Order administration under president Soeharto, who pursued equality in education policies.

Soeharto built hundreds of thousands of schools to improve access to education and later launched the mandatory basic education for all. The result was an improved national adult literacy rate of over 90 percent.

However, Soeharto was only interested in numbers, in quantity, and he did less in improving the quality of education. Worse yet, schools and teachers during this time were just an extension of the New Order’s political puppeteers, and the students were at the receiving end of their machinations.

Education under Soeharto, as it turned out, was vastly different from Ki Hadjar Dewantara’s teachings, whose essence was character building.

During the reform movement that followed Soeharto’s downfall, political leaders tried to change the education system by making it more humane and also, unfortunately, more religious.

The first thing they did was to amend the Constitution by inserting a number of stipulations, including one on mandatory basic education, another requiring 20 percent of the budget for education and another mentioning the importance of science and technology.

The amendment also included the aim of national education, i.e. “enhancing religious and pious feelings as well as moral excellence with a view to raising the intellectual capacity of the nation.”

And the result of this amendment is that the state is obliged to provide religious education for all students, something we find unnecessary.

Ten years after reformasi, our state of education has not moved much, despite the soaring costs. On many issues, it has remained the same or gotten worse.

True, Indonesia lies at the higher end of the list for East Asia in terms of Education for All Development Index, published by UNESCO, ranking above Malaysia, Vietnam and the Philippines, and below South Korea and China.

True, some of our best students have won international awards, including in the recent Asian Physics Olympiad. But truth be told, many of those award-winning students come from the elite schools.

The majority of our students still struggle with the mounting burden of school subjects, as our education system continues to treat them like lifeless objects.

Also, the national examination, introduced recently as the main requirement for students to graduate from secondary and high schools, has became an additional burden for many students and parents alike. For them, it’s a nightmare.

The national exams, however, have nothing to do with character building or instilling moral integrity. On the contrary, they encourage cheating among students, and even teachers, and corruption at the very highest levels, by leaking the test papers.

All in all, despite the improving situation and curriculum, our education system still doesn’t produce humane students with strong characters, but rather robot-like students.

Once again, we’ve failed to uphold the philosophical teachings of Ki Hadjar Dewantara, which puts students at the center, as the focus of the teaching-learning process.

Teachers in front should lead through examples, in the middle should work together with students, and in the back provide support.

It’s time now for us to move toward a more humane education, one that treats students as human beings, builds their character and, most of all, raises the intellectual capacity of the nation. (The Jakarta Post)