Education bill and the real mess behind the educational system

Elwin Tobing, Founder, The Indonesian Institute, Jakarta, elwin@theindonesianinstitute.org

Anyone new to the debate on the education bill recently endorsed by the legislature may be forgiven for thinking that the issue was about religion, not education, given the main controversy surrounding it.

Yet for years, our national education system has been in a mess. Problems include a shortage of teachers and a limited education budget. National spending on education as a percentage of national output is one of the lowest in Asia. Other concerns include a poor quality of teaching, inadequate textbooks and a low standard of postsecondary institutions.

According to a survey conducted by Asiaweek magazine in 2000 on the 77 best multidisciplinary schools of Asia and Oceania, University of Indonesia and Gajah Mada University, the best performers from Indonesia, were ranked at No. 61 and No. 68, respectively. Kyoto University was ranked No. 1 and the National University of Singapore was No. 4.

Our institutions of higher education are behind those of Malaysia, Philippines and Thailand. The University of Malaya in Malaysia was ranked No. 41, University of the Philippines was No. 48 and Thammasat University in Thailand was No. 51.

The low quality of college and university graduates is another concern. From 1982 to 1998, unemployment among the educated labor force continued to increase while the number of jobless workers who were less educated decreased, a trend that is likely to be seen in the five years following 1998. In the early 1990s, former education minister Wardiman Djojonegoro tried resolving the problem by introducing a concept of link and match. The concept, however, was a failure as the gap between the labor market and education, especially postsecondary education, continues to widen.

The latest results from the nationally administered final exams for senior high schools only adds further weight to the messy problem. About 10.6 percent of the public high school students who took the exams across the nation failed.

The disgraceful results occurred in West Sumatra, East Nusa Tenggara Timur and North Sulawesi, where the rate of failure was 30 percent, 29.54 percent and 26.47 percent, respectively. That means 12,044 high school students of the 37,522 who took the test in West Sumatra, failed. This number is not a mistake. If one out of every three high school students cannot pass their final exams, there is a serious problem with our educational system.

The failure rate among vocational high school students is even worse. Almost half of the vocational high school students in East Nusa Tenggara could not pass the test. Nationally, there were 900,000 students from public high schools and 500,000 students of vocational high school students who took the exams.

Dikmenti Suharyanto, the national head of the vocational school program, said mathematics was the main cause for the students' failure, followed by English. About 25 percent of the students from vocational schools who failed performed poorly in maths. At one public high school in Jakarta, 17 of the failing 20 students had flunked the exam because of the English section.

Improving the quality of teaching, redesigning the curriculum and hiring more qualified teachers for the two subjects would be obvious solutions, however, this all implies an increase in spending. But the new Education Law also implies more of the same. The government has to deploy 100,000 religious teachers. Minister of Religious Affairs Said Agiel Munawar said that the government was ready to deploy 30,000 additional teachers funded by the state budget and an additional 70,000 teachers would be recruited from the Ministry of National Education.

Ours is not only a rapidly changing era but also a technologically demanding one. Globalization means ferocious competition in almost all aspects. The fundamental key to survival and prosperity is the ability to acquire knowledge, and education is the means to do that. The fundamental purpose of education is to teach students how to imagine, think, analyze and propose solutions to problems as well as how to behave.

To be able to compete internationally, our entire population has to be better educated than the populations of our competitors. Our secondary schools and colleges need to strive for excellence in all fields and particularly in science and technology.

Our universities and research institutions have sufficient human and financial resources to be able to compete globally as well as to bring them closer to the business sector. Our teachers have to be better teachers. Our students have to become multilingual with English as their second language. Every student will need to do things better than they are at present. The key to the future is what is being taught in today's classrooms.

Just like a monument, education endures not because of the bricks but because of what they represent. Its true foundation is neither of rock nor symbols, but of values such as liberty and freedom; the freedom to question and to explore the answers of any question. These core values, which underpin education and the development of our society, have to be solid.

But the recent debate and the new bill have revealed something else. We tend to be more interested in symbols rather than addressing the fundamental problems that are worsening our education system. Instead of taking care of the mess, the politicians, leaders and many influential figures in our society are trying to appease the masses.

As a nation, our huge task goes beyond improving the education system. We also have a huge mess in our national economy and fsecurity. The number of unemployed in the country almost totals 40 million. The number of people living in poverty has also reached about 40 million. Since 1998, large numbers of people in different parts of Indonesia have had to flee from one part of the country to another, primarily as a result of political conflict and ethnic violence.

The official number of internally displaced persons in Indonesia has hit more than one million. It accounts for more than 20 percent of the total number of people who have been forcibly displaced by internal conflicts, intercommunal violence and related violations of human rights in Asia. Many are in need of basic assistance, protection and reintegration and development support.

This huge task demands sincerity, not dishonesty. It requires a respect for differences, not disrespect. It demands cooperation, not the alienation of others.