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

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.