Administration to merge 200 elementary schools

JAKARTA (JP): The city administration will soon merge about 200 state elementary schools which have a scarcity of students, an official said yesterday.

Deputy head of the city's teaching and education office, Gito Poernomo, said the decision to merge the schools was taken because they failed to meet the official requirement for a school to accommodate at least 100 students.

Under the plan, which is aimed at improving efficiency in the teaching and learning process, students and teachers of schools to be merged will be transferred to the nearest state school in their area, he said.

He said the schools to be most affected by the mergers would be schools with afternoon classes.

"The students and teachers will not lose anything. They instead will be able to intensify the learning process and materials given in morning classes," he said.

Gito said the students would be expected to spend a couple of hours after school on vocational studies, which were unavailable at schools with afternoon classes.

The 200 elementary schools to be merged included 60 schools in Central Jakarta, 65 in South Jakarta, 40 in East Jakarta, 30 in West Jakarta and one in North Jakarta, said Gito.

He said some of the 200 schools might not be merged if there was only one school in an area.

The 200 schools used to accommodate over 100 students each, but the number dropped when the effects of the economic crisis started to set in.

Many students quit school because their parents could not afford the tuition fees, said Gito without giving data.

He said that after the mergers, several school buildings would be left empty and therefore demolished to make way for other buildings.

Gito gave no details on what buildings would be built, only that the land would be used for other purposes.

Some of the school buildings to be affected by the plan are currently used by two different school managements in the morning and afternoon respectively, he said.

The administration merged 35 schools in the first five months of this year, he said. They consist of six in East Jakarta, nine in South Jakarta and 10 in each Central and West Jakarta.

Gito also said his office had suggested that the governor eliminate the collection of levies on state elementary school entrance fees.

"We hope that the governor will agree to eliminate the fees because it would help parents, especially during this time of crisis," he said. (cst)