Education master plan -- Quo Vadis?

By Nirwan Idrus

JAKARTA (JP): Somebody was recently heard asking if Indonesia has an education master plan? Somebody else was heard replying: "A what?", and another murmured something about it being overdue.

This exchange could not have taken place in the New Order era. Not because such a conversation was frowned upon, but that everyone would have believed that there was a master plan somewhere known perhaps only to the President and his Minister of Education and Culture. Plans and master plans were the prerogatives of the central government and its bureaucrats. Centralized control was so perfect that it was not necessary for institutions and outlying regional offices to know of and about any such plans.

The new education paradigm which emphasizes autonomy, quality and devolution had made this belief superseded. However, regrettably, even one year into the Reformasi (reform) era, we still meet many senior educators at Deans level and above, who publicly express preferences for status quo.

In facing globalization, the free-trade era and sharply increasing competition in many facets of business and professional life, status quo is not an option for Indonesia. Any argument for status quo is nothing but an excuse for doing nothing. These people will get what they deserve. Unfortunately, they are dragging Indonesia's young people down with them.

Maybe we should excuse them because the system they were in dictated the culture that resulted, and as a culture it is difficult to change in a short time. However, the question remains, whether they want to see Indonesia able to compete globally or be left behind forever.

It is them who will need to decide and as can be surmised from the short discussion above, the sin they will have to bear is deep and wide and has ramifications not only for one or two years but at least a generation. Are these people ready to accept such a responsibility? If not, then they will have to investigate and accept that the only way to move forward to avoid being burdened with that sin, is for themselves to change.

We all know that globalization, the free-trade era, the increasingly sharpened competition, the opening of one's own market to all and for all and sundry are inevitable. What is worse is that the speed by which all these changes are occurring is increasing almost exponentially as well.

Indonesia therefore must move in a big hurry if it wants to compete even with its nearby neighbors. Malaysia, Singapore, Philippines, Bangladesh, Pakistan and India, to name a few, all have one big advantage over Indonesia already: their familiar use of the English language, and it is the global language. But of course it does not end there. Our own education system has been proven many times in the international arena as gravely lacking. Our primary and secondary students are doing more subjects than their counterparts in other parts of the world, but where it counts they do not excel. Many of the subjects they have to learn are indoctrination, and yet in practice their knowledge and repeated training of the National Constitution and religions is not reflected.

So, how do we fix this problem? It seems important now that we look at the problems very carefully. This is probably the only opportunity for us to really reform our education system. If we blow this chance, there won't be another one for years to come. It is therefore also important that we come up with a lasting solution.

But, I hear you say, we have been told that the world is ever changing and changing very rapidly. So how can we have a lasting solution? New problems will come up and have to be solved. New opportunities will also arise and we have to take advantage of them. There are also threats, obstacles and brick walls. What sort of lasting solution is able to handle all of these and yet introduce novel ideas, processes, procedures and rules which are supposed to keep our educational results abreast of advances in the world?

Before we answer that question, let's look at a scenario where we have full control of the fate of our future. How can we have full control of the future? The answer is very simple, and to some extent it is staring us in the eyes. The continuing delay in expurgating corruption, collusion and nepotism (or KKN) in Indonesia is the result of 32 years of effort by the New Order in making the future advantageous to them. The lesson is that, we have to make the future if we want the future to work for us. The future is what we make of it. With the increasingly competitive world, it becomes even more important that we should at least be up there with the rest of them to make the future that we want rather than be dictated by somebody else's future.

So, we have full control of the road ahead. What would you like to do with it?

You can make it smaller, you can make it straight, you can make it winding, you can seal it, you can leave it unsealed, you can make it short, you can make it long or there's lots of other ways. Isn't that fun? Of course it is. What is more fun is to see the results of what you have done to that road.

A short road will not let you travel far. A narrow one will not let wide vehicles through. A winding one will not get you there quickly. The choice is yours. Depending on what you made the road for, all of the above can be accommodated. Thus, you must have reasons for wanting the road in the first place, so that you can specify its properties as well as you wish. That is fun, isn't it? But if you want the road to be actually made, then you must get the shovels, the steamrollers, the sand, the gravel, the asphalt and the people to do the job. There is no road without hard work, and there will be no future without similar hard work.

To come back to the question posed previously, that is, what sort of a lasting solution is there that will address the ever- changing requirements and yet be able to create the aura of stability, we need to reflect on the scenario given in the previous paragraph. We have to build that road, but to ensure that we build the right road for the right reasons, we have to plan it well before even the first grain of sand is laid. The blueprint has to be well thought out and then clearly drawn.

In the education sphere, the concept of long-term plans should be synonymous with education itself. You cannot have education without a long term or master plan.

The question that may be raised is, what is long term? Is five years long term? Is 10 years long term? Seeing that schooling takes 12 years, even 10 years is not acceptable as long term. If one adds an average first degree of say four years, we are really looking at 16 years of education before we can say that is the end of one generation of students. Therefore, to have a long-term plan of less than this is nonsensical.

Aside from this duration consideration, we have to realize also that an education master plan will not only produce graduates for the present, but more importantly it is the license that makes or breaks the country's human resources (HR) future. Get it right and like Singapore you will develop your HR largely on target with global and technology development, bringing self- generated prosperity within reach. Get it wrong and you and your HR will be banished to the dungeon for life. This might sound somewhat harsh, but only those who can contemplate the worst will enjoy the best.

It seems prudent to be thinking of an education master plan that spans some twenty-five to forty years. This would then ensure continuity and stability. It would prevent succeeding ministers of education to rescind previous decisions and introduce new ones that are not in line with the master plan. Granted that requirements and conditions change and that plans may need modifications, these should only occur if and when the master plan is justifiably modified as well. The objective or target of the master plan, however, is hardly changeable, provided it has been developed properly, taking into account the myriad of considerations.

How do we start in the case of the Indonesian education? Observations will show that the Indonesian education system is made up of a complex array of educational acts/laws/legislation, Presidential decrees, ministerial decisional letters, ministerial instructions and government regulations.

If the Ministry of Education and Culture is serious about its new paradigm of, among others, autonomy, devolution and quality, then it behooves them to lead by example and rationalize the complex array above and simplify the bureaucracy of the Ministry and the Directorates General, while simultaneously empowering the various interfaces with the operational units such as schools, polytechnics and universities.

In order to do this successfully, of course one would need a good set of broad guidelines (not instructions) which in the ultimate can form an element of the educational master plan.

Then we would need a Short Life Working Party (SLWP) which involves selected people from both the Ministry of Education (Depdikbud) and the Ministry of Labor (Depnaker) as well as the National Planning Bureau (Bappenas), to sit down and map out the 40-year education master plan.

The first guiding principle for this SLWP should be Stephen Covey's second habit of highly effective people, namely "begin with the end in mind".

Thus we start with the question of what sort of Indonesian human resources do we want to have in 40 years or 25 years time (but no earlier). Indeed we can quickly see that the teacher in the year 2025 is not yet born. Isn't this the best start to reforming our HR?

It is true that 2025 is 22 years after AFTA (ASEAN free market) and we are not ready for it at least in HR terms. But is it not better to start crawling now in order to sprint in 2025, rather than throwing our hands in the air and say God help us (again!)?

An education master plan is certainly one of a number of positive choices this country has, to produce the right HR for the new millennium, for the new and upcoming technology, for this country and for the world. The question is: do we want to be counted in the inevitable globalized world or do we want to disappear into oblivion. Quo vadis?

The writer is an International Higher Education Consultant living in Jakarta. This article is a personal opinion only.