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A8
July 12, 2010
The President Post
www.thepresidentpost.com
Education
Education Budget Up to Rp330 Trillion
Before End of SBY’s Term
By Alci Tamesa
Indonesia has seen its national
budget allocation
for education increased
markedly during the
term of President Susilo
Bambang Yudhoyono
(SBY). This year’s allocation is
Rp221.47 trillion or 20% of the
national budget. But here’s a bigger
news: before the end of SBY’s
term, the government will have
increased the education budget
to Rp330 trillion, according to
Minister of Education Prof. Muhammad
Nuh.
The minister made the announcement
during a recent
hearing with Commission X of
the House of Representatives
(DPR). This in itself is an indication
that President SBY’s government
is very serious about raising
people’s welfare through education
and training.
Not long after he had made the
announcement, came the news
that a year after SBY concludes
his second term of office in 2014,
the budget allocation for education
will soar to Rp350 trillion—
an indication that by then education
will have become, perhaps,
the most important sector to be
developed in order to upgrade the
quality of Indonesia’s human resources.
So, education observes say, perhaps
one of SBY’s most substantial
contributions for Indonesia’s
academic society is the new tradition
to make education sector
the recipient of the largest allocation
of state budget. This had in
fact started in 2009, when for the
first time in the nation’s history
the allocation for education was
raised to 20% of the annual state
budget.
But the euphoria over budget
increase quickly evaporated when
it was learned that well over 60$
of this year’s budget allocation
for education would go for routine
expenditure. This could be
unavoidable if indeed the theory
is that teachers’ salaries must be
increased because they have for
a long time been known as lowpaid
workers.
This year, for example, unless
there is a change in budget policy
orientation, a great portion of the
2014 budget will be used up for
routine spending again and this
spending pattern will continue at
a time when the real need is quality
instead of quantity-oriented
education.
This is apparently the reason
why Minister Nuh remains com-
mitted to retaining such fixed
costs as BOS—the operational
expenses for elementary and junior
high schools—despite his
well publicized commitment to
streamlining spending in order
to curb irregularities.
This is considered a crucial issue
by corruption watchdogs because
one thing that has been
forgotten for many years is the
need to promote budget efficiency
within the education ministry.
Likewise, budget efficiency campaigns
need to be conducted in
other government departments
as well. Only in that way can we
know how much of the national
budget has been well spent and
whether budget increase can really
contribute to quality improvement
and promotion of educational
equity.
But many critics believe that
increasing the budget allocation
for education is not a guarantee
that the quality of education
will automatically improve. The
problem of education in Indonesia
is so complex that one or two
terms of office would be insufficient
for a minister of even a president
to provide a comprehensive
remedy.
For instance, even as the minister
is upbeat about budget hike,
his vice minister is cautious about
school dropouts that are systematically
increasing in number.
Vice Minister for Education
Prof. Fasli Jalal was recently quoted
as recalling an announcement
by the World Vision that every
year at least one million children
aged 7-15 are forced to drop out
due to many reasons. One common
reason is their families’ inability
to support them financially.
Another common reason is
that junior high schools are too
far away from elementary schools
so students have difficulty continuing
after completing their
elementary education. In many
parts of the country—except on
the island of Java—schools are
commonly located very far from
students’ homes while transportation
is a big problem.
Still another reason cited by
Prof Fasli is that in most rural areas,
students of that age category
(7-15 years old) are obliged to
help their parents earn money in
whatever way possible, so those
who are comfortable with such
early jobs are not encouraged to
pursue higher education.
The vice minister explains that
on average, some 4% of schoolaged
children across Indonesia
still have no access to education.
The children are not to blame;
the government’s inability to
reach all of them is the culprit.
To overcome this, however,
the Ministry of National Education
(MONE) is intensifying efforts
to provide greater access to
education while gradually raising
the quality of teachers through
National Teachers’ Certification
Program.
Another effort that has been
launched is to encourage centralization
of educational institutions
in the sense that elementary, junior,
and senior high schools are
relocated in the same premises so
students will no longer complain
about distance.
Currently the school participation
index—commonly referred
to in Indonesia as APK—for elementary
school children is 115%,
but for junior high school is 70%
and on senior high school level,
the index is only 60%.
At the university level, the index
is more discouraging—only
18%, meaning that the majority
of population expected to attend
university still cannot do so.
It also means that most university-age
youths are not pursuing
higher education. This is the reason
why only around 4.5 million
of the country’s total population
of 240 million are registered on
Indonesian campuses.
Real Issues
This being the case, perhaps
one cannot easily conclude
whether or not the increases in
education budget are sufficient.
The real issue at the moment, according
to education observers, is
not just about raising salaries and
improving facilities. The real issue
is actually a lack of comprehensive
strategy for raising the
quality of Indonesia’s human resources
through education and
training.
In the first Instance, there must
be a good strategy to determine
the ratio of general and vocational
education up to secondary or
senior high school level. The government
is working to alter the
current ratio to 70% vocational
education and 30% general education
on the senior high level.
If this works well, only those in
the 30% group will seek university
education whereas those in the
70% category will be prepared to
either enter the job market quickly
or become job-creators themselves.
So until here, the focus of
education is mainly limited to
preparing students to get a job.
Holistic education, consequently,
is abandoned. Not surprisingly
schools do not produce graduates
with strong personality and
integrity, observers say.
Another big issue that must
be solved is the question of quality
disparity. Given the fact that
Indonesia is a huge archipelago
and only certain major islands
are well developed economically,
good teachers are concentrated
in big cities where they can earn
good salaries. As a result, schools
in big cities are of much higher
quality than those in remote
parts of the country.
Education quality disparity is
an issue that cannot be solved by
MONE alone. Solution for this
needs an integrated approach
from many government ministries
especially the ones in charge
of the economy and people’s welfare.
Now, given the fact that the
government has to spend for other
sectors as well, the right thing
to do is to encourage private
schools to take part of the burden.
This calls for equal treatment
in many ways to the extent
Minister of Education Prof. Muhamad Nuh
that private schools will no longer
see discrimination in policy execution.
In recent years, especially during
President SBY’s term, many
private schools have begun to see
change including higher frequency
of visits to private universities
by high ranking officials as well
as their support for private educational
institutions’ cooperation
initiatives with provincial governments.
One most recent such
example is the cooperation between
the government of Papua
and Pelita Harapan Educational
Foundation for the establishment
of Sekolah Papua Harapan,
as was recently reported by an education
and university life magazine
called CampusAsia.
In order to provide students
with greater access to education
in a more sophisticated way, First
Lady Mrs. Ani Yudhoyono is
championing a nation-wide campaign
called “Smart Indonesia.”
Under this program, the government
sends out a lot of “educational
cars, educational motorcycles
and educational boats”
to enable students to get reading
material on the spot. In this way,
the First Lady hopes that students
who cannot obtain proper books
and learning facilities may get
them free of charge from those
modes of transportation.
She made the announcement
when addressing the general assembly
of the Forum of Asia Pacific
Parliamentarians for Education
(FASPPED) in Jakarta
recently. The aim is to promote
equal opportunity and better access
to education especially for
chuldren from “less fortunate”
families.
With all these endeavors going
on, more and more people are
now saying that SBY deserves being
called a “pro-education president”,
a terminology introduced
Photo: www.presidenri.go.id
by presidential spokesman Dr.
Dino Patti Djalal.
All the optimism apart, one
may ask whether the emphasis
on education that has been set in
motion by SBY will remain on
the government’s agenda when
the president leaves offices in October
2014.
Indonesia still does not have a
truly consistent long-term strategy
for education, though on paper
it does. So, perhaps one of the
policy priorities MONE needs to
put in motion during SBY’s term
of office is to draft a long-term
strategic plan that will be implemented
for decades to come.
The President himself has repeatedly
said that the strength of
every nation is made by its scholars
and education sector is the
breeding ground of such scholars.
This is apparently the reason why
he has put so much emphasis on
the need to upgrade the quality of
education across the country.
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