Helping to nourish RI's primary education<\/p>\n
Elisabeth Klaver is project manager of the assistance team for
\nthe research component of the Primary Education Quality
\nImprovement Project (PEQIP). With her team, she assists a Central
\nProject Management Unit in the Direktorat Pendidikan Dasar
\n(Directorate of Primary Education) in Jakarta.<\/p>\n
As such, she has the overall technical and financial
\nresponsibility for this component.<\/p>\n
In close cooperation with the Ministry of Education and
\nCulture, the Indonesian researchers of her counterpart, PT. Mitra
\nLingkungan Dinamika and Professor Creemers of the University of
\nGroningen, the research plan for this project was developed. This
\nplan will be executed together with the consultant of the
\nDeutsche Gesellschaft fr Technische Zusammenarbeit and the
\nBritish Council.<\/p>\n
These organizations are responsible for the assistance of
\nquality improvement activities such as teacher professional
\ndevelopment, management training, evaluation and monitoring and
\ncurriculum development.<\/p>\n
Klaver is employed by DHV Consultants BV, an independent Dutch
\nConsultancy firm which has had an office in Jakarta for more than
\ntwenty years. The firm has executed projects in a wide range of
\nsectors. The expertise which it originally gained in an
\nengineering context became more and more supplemented by
\nknowledge and experience in the field of institutional and human
\nresources development. Education has now become an important
\nfield of interest for DHV Consultants. DHV has established a
\nseries of working relationships with several European and Dutch
\nuniversities and institutes for international education on
\neducation projects.<\/p>\n
For loan projects, DHV is cooperating with the Netherlands
\norganization for international cooperation in higher education
\nknown as NUFFIC.<\/p>\n
Since joining with DHV, Elisabeth Klaver has been involved in
\neducation projects worldwide. She arrived in Indonesia in April
\nof this year. The PEQIP Project started in August 1992 with
\ntraining activities and data collection. The project is
\nconcentrating its activities in six Indonesian provinces: Aceh,
\nWest Sumatra, Yogyakarta, North Sulawesi, Bali and East Nusa
\nTenggara. These provinces have not yet profited from previous
\ninnovations and it is expected that the outcome of this project
\nwill be disseminated to other areas in a later phase.<\/p>\n
For this project, the government of Indonesia and the
\nInternational Bank for Reconstruction and Development have
\nconcluded a loan agreement.<\/p>\n
The main objective of PEQIP is to introduce policies and a
\nmechanism to improve the quality of primary education in
\nIndonesia.<\/p>\n
An important organizational unit for the project is the Gugus
\nSekolah (school affiliation). The core school of this gugus
\nserves as a resource center for the nearby satellite schools (SD
\nIMBAS).<\/p>\n
During recent site visits, Klaver was very impressed by the
\nenthusiasm and the motivation of the teachers to get the utmost
\nout of the newly provided equipment and the material to the PEQIP
\nschools.<\/p>\n
The total number of schools involved in the project is 432,
\ninvolving 3,423 teachers and 77,857 students.<\/p>\n
According to the National Teachers Association, there are
\nabout 1,116,000 elementary school teachers in Indonesia and 26
\nmillion primary school students. Most of the students are
\nregistered in public schools, Sekolah Dasar or Sekolah Dasar
\nInpres. The last are elementary schools built under the
\nPresidential Decree in line with the country's compulsory
\neducation program.<\/p>\n
The school system now reaches into remote areas and the
\npopulation has access to primary and secondary education. The
\ngovernment has created over five million new primary school seats
\nunder the INPRES school construction programs. Indonesia is close
\nto reaching near universal enrollment at primary level.<\/p>\n
In the course of the expansion period, the infrastructure,
\nsuch as buildings, are developed and the number of teachers
\nsignificantly increased. However, together with these enormous
\nefforts and the successes of the program, shortcomings also
\nbecame visible. It was for this reason that the government's
\nFive-Year Plan set goals that are concerned with improving
\neducation, particularly on the primary school level.<\/p>\n
In the project, there's a strong awareness that the quality of
\neducation is in the hands of the teachers. The project is very
\nconcerned about the decisions teachers have to make day by day in
\ntheir classrooms. Theory development and empirical research can
\nbe innovative and supporting tools of great value, especially
\nwhen they focus on the relationship between all the factors of
\nthe various educational levels in the school system, taking
\nclassroom activities as the core process.<\/p>\n
To put it differently, as a plant that only grows when a
\ncombination of factors like light, water, soil and care are
\noptimized, likewise a child can only develop when a combination
\nof factors are optimized in his or her learning surroundings.
\nTheory development and empirical research can contribute to that
\nawareness.<\/p>",
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