72 elementary schools in Indramayu to be merged

Nana Rukmana, The Jakarta Post, Indramayu, West Java

At least 72 state-run elementary schools in the Indramayu regency will be merged, reducing their number to 32, due to a shortage of teaching staff and a low education budget.

Herutoko D., chief of the local education ministry office, said the administration had been forced to implement the school mergers to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the regency's education system.

"We have no alternative other than school mergers to make the education program in the elementary schools efficient and effective," he said.

Herutoko explained that the elementary schools to be merged were those with less than 50 percent of the standard teaching staff and fewer than 120 students.

"With the merger program, schools will have an adequate number of teaching and administrative staff, school guards and students."

He added that the local education ministry office would hand the closed schools over to the local administration so that they could be used for other purposes.

Herutoko acknowledged that the quality of education in the regency was the lowest in West Java because of the teacher shortage, the size of the education budget and the local people's poor awareness of the importance of education.

He said the regency had faced shortages of teaching and administrative staff for a long time and had no funds to recruit new staff.

He said the 72 schools to be merged were suffering a shortage of 4,000 teachers and added that the learning process was ineffective because teachers had to attend to two or three classes simultaneously.

Data at the local education ministry office indicate that there are 996 state-run elementary schools, served by 990 headmasters, around 4,700 teaching staff and 505 administrative staff and school guards, with a student population of 178,242.

"We are also lacking six headmasters and several of the existing headmasters are entering their mandatory pension age," he said.

Narjo Suharjo, a member of the regency legislature's Commission D on education and social affairs, warned that the school mergers would jeopardize the compulsory nine-year school program, since students from the closed schools would be reluctant to travel long distances to attend class.

"The school mergers may be the best alternative but the local government should adopt anticipatory measures to make sure that it will make the learning process effective and efficient," he said.

Narjo also said the government had not consulted with the local legislative council before making the decision.

"The regency legislators should also discuss the education problem with the local administration to seek a better solution, including an improvement in the education budget as another alternative," he said.

Narjo also called on the local administration to launch a publicity campaign to improve local people's awareness of the importance of education.

He said local people in many villages did not send their school-age children to class because they had yet to realize the importance of academic qualifications.

"The increasing number of unskilled local people who are seeking jobs in other provinces and overseas and of prostitutes has a lot to do with the poor state of education in the regency," he said.