14,000 students may drop out as fees becomes unaffordable in Ciamis

Nana Rukmana, The Jakarta Post, Cirebon

Around 14,000 students are facing the threat of dropping out from their elementary, junior and senior high schools in the West Java town of Ciamis, as their parents can no longer afford to pay their children's tuition fees.

In the neighboring cities of Cirebon and Indramayu, meanwhile, schools are badly in need of thousands more teachers to address the shortages.

Head of the Ciamis national education office Aas Shofyani said on Thursday that girls made up 60 percent of the 14,000 students expected to drop out of their schools.

"Already 4,000 students have officially dropped out and we are striving to prevent the number of dropouts from increasing," he told Antara

Apart from economic difficulties on the part of the students' families, he said local cultural factors did not encourage women to continue their studies in higher-level schools or colleges.

Despite the rapid flow of information in Indonesia, many conservative villagers across the county still believe that women do not need to pursue higher education because their career will eventually end up in the kitchen after getting married.

In an effort to tackle problems stemming from dropouts, Aas said the local government would optimize special education packages for the dropout students from elementary and junior high schools.

He said he would also ask the West Java provincial education office to help deal with the dropout problems.

Meanwhile, local education officials said Indramayu was facing a shortage of 4,000 teachers for elementary schools, while Cirebon was demanding the recruitment of more than 800 others to tackle the deficit in elementary, junior and senior high schools.

"It's a serious problem that we must deal with soon. But the limited budget of the Indramayu regency government has severely hampered our efforts," Herutoko, head of the elementary education division at the town's administration office, said.

He said there was a total of 6,311 civil servants working or teaching 178,242 students in at least 996 state elementary schools throughout Indramayu.

Separately, head of the Cirebon national education office Ageung Sumaryana said of the 800 shortfall, a shortage of 340 teachers had hit junior high schools in the city.

"The shortage of teachers is an urgent need to be filled. But due to the limited budget of the Cirebon administration, the problem cannot be addressed quickly," he said.

He said that to overcome the shortages, his office had provided temporary "honorary teachers" to schools with shortages in their teaching staff.

"The existence of honorary teachers is very helpful to us," Ageung said.

But at the same time, he said their existence posed a new financial burden for the administration because most of the honorary teachers had yet to be appointed as civil servants despite having dedicated themselves for many years in their respective workplaces.

He said Cirebon had a total of 2,700 civil servants serving as teachers at 159 state elementary schools, 40 at state junior high schools and 24 others at state senior high schools.

"They also help teach at private schools. It can happen because Cirebon has been facing a lack of teachers," Ageung added.

The Cirebon legislative council speaker said the legislature regarded the city's shortage of teachers as a priority problem to be solved.

"It's a very serious problem. It's not a minor matter because it is related to the development of human resources for future generations," he told The Jakarta Post.