Education minister supports elite schools

Education minister supports elite schools

JAKARTA (JP): Minister of Education and Culture Wardiman said on Saturday that he supports the setting up of special schools for gifted and talented students.

Wardiman said the establishment of elite schools would not be unfair to other public schools.

"Every student, either from public schools or elite ones, is a national asset which is very important to the progress of our development in the future," the minister said.

He told members of the Soposurung Foundation, who visited the ministry on Saturday, that students with higher intellectual capabilities need special facilities.

Lazy

"If we place them in regular public schools, they will probably become lazy and lose interest in studying," Wardiman said.

The government is trying to establish more elite senior high schools like SMA Taruna Nusantara in Magelang, Central Java, which was established in 1990 by private investors in cooperation with the Indonesian Armed Forces and the Taman Siswa Institution.

Other elite schools established by private investors include Pelita Harapan in the Lippo Karawaci project in Tangerang, the Al Azhar Boarding School in the Lippo City Complex in Bekasi, St. Laurensia in the Alam Sutera housing complex in Serpong, Tangerang, and the Jaya Global School in the Bintaro Jaya housing complex in Tangerang.

Wardiman told the chairman of the Soposurung Foundation, Gustave Panjaitan, that the private sector has been necessary in the absence of government funds.

"There are many obstacles to establishing more elite schools here, especially the problems of funding. Public participation in education is very important, as in the case of the SMA 3 senior high school in Balige, Medan," Wardiman said.

Approval

The Soposurung Foundation, founded by Minister of Administrative Reforms T.B. Silalahi in 1990, turned SMA 3 from a regular school into an elite school in 1991 with the approval of the Ministry of Education and Culture.

The school, now equipped with a library, laboratories, computer terminals and sport facilities, gives 20 percent of its seats to the country's junior high school graduates with the highest grades and the remaining 80 percent to students who pass the entrance tests.(31)