72 elementary schools in Indramayu to be merged

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.