Autonomy expected to improve education

Autonomy expected to improve education

JAKARTA (JP): Local administrations should make the best use of the greater autonomy from the central government to develop the educational system, Minister of Education and Culture Wardiman Djojonegoro said yesterday.

Wardiman said that the autonomy will in fact allow "wealthy" local governments to make available good educational facilities in their regions.

"However, this is only one positive point among the aspects of autonomy and there is much more to it than the financial factor," he said as quoted by Antara news agency.

In an step toward increasing the autonomy of local governments, the minister of home affairs issued a decree last October about the implementation of autonomy in 26 regencies of the nation's 27 provinces on a trial basis.

This would imply that the education offices in the 26 regencies or cities could be scrapped. According to the decree this should be done by April 5, 1995.

This would mean that the regency offices of the Ministry of Education and Culture should be put under the Ministry of Home Affairs.

Presently, for elementary education, the education and culture ministry runs two offices in the regency, namely the Kandep, which oversees curriculum, and the Dinas, which manages human resources and financial matters.

For secondary education, all aspects, ranging from human resources and facilities to the curriculum, are managed by the Kandep.

Under the new "autonomy scheme" all educational institutions, starting from kindergarten to senior high schools, will be simplified and handled by the Dinas.

Experts have expressed skepticism over the plans for educational autonomy as there have already been numerous complaints about the quality and management of elementary education throughout the country.

Many have suggested instead that educational matters should be managed by the Ministry of Education and Culture alone.

In earlier news reports, Harsja W. Bachtiar, an aide to Wardiman, said that it would be more advantageous if elementary education was managed by the Ministry of Education and Culture, especially considering that it would be beneficial in the process of strengthening national unity.

Autonomy, he said, would further downgrade the quality of education because local governments have the tendency to deal with teachers in the way they would manage office administrators, and not as educators.

Harsja also pointed out that the local administrations allocate only a very small amount of funds to elementary education from their development budgets.(pwn)