180,000 youths not in school

JAKARTA (JP): A total of 187,212 youngsters aged between 15 and 21 did not attend school at all last year, an official has said.

Bahar Laut, an official of the city's social and political affairs directorate, said on Friday that the youngsters were facing the same dilemma as 60,000 other poor children between ages seven and 15.

"This means that there are at least 247,200 youngsters and kids here who do not study in a school because they are too poor," Bahar said, urging the city administration to pay more attention to their fate.

Parents of the 60,000 children cannot afford send them to school.

"They feel that once kids finish elementary school, they want to go to senior high school and then on to college," Bahar said.

"When parents don't have money, they will not allow their children to even dream of school... so they tell them to forget about it."

City councilor Agus Waluyo also said that aside from 8,156 schoolchildren who dropped out of school this year due to the economic crisis, it was feared another 87,570 would follow suit in the near future.

Agus, quoting data from the Ministry of Education and Culture, said that out of the 87,570 students feared to drop out, 35,265 would be elementary schoolchildren, 29,605 would be from junior high school and 22,700 from senior high school. (ylt)