Education master plan -- Quo Vadis?

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and devolution had made this belief superseded.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.