Education needs more attention

JAKARTA (JP): The fourth National Education Convention ended on Friday, recommending that the country's political elite pay more attention to national education.

"Therefore, we urge all people, especially the political elite, to place education as a political issue that urgently needs care and handling.

"Without that, education will remain stagnant as all decisionmakers can easily abandon the issue," Sutjipto, chairman of the convention's organizing committee and rector of the Jakarta State University, told The Jakarta Post after the closing of the event on Friday.

"Education must be the main priority in developing Indonesia into a new nation," he said.

He said a drastic change in the national education paradigm must be made in the political field.

"Our politicians are used to seeing quick results and their interest is to maintain their grip on power.

"Unlike the economy or politics, education is a long-term investment and an actual foundation of the nation," Sutjipto said.

The four-day convention, featuring 1,112 experts, activists, government officials and participants from universities from all over the country, came up with a recommendation called the "Agenda Jakarta 2000".

Among the crucial bids was a demand for a 25-percent education fund from the state budget, or 5 percent from the Gross Domestic Product.

"We've been asking for this for quite a long time. Whatever the country's condition is ... 25 percent is a must, since our education system is (lagging) far behind," Sutjipto said.

On Thursday, the Ministry of National Education announced it was set to submit a Rp 25 trillion (US$2.9 billion) education budget for 2001. The proposed budget is higher than the current nine-month budget in which Rp 11 trillion was allocated for education.

Currently less than 10 percent of the state budget is allocated for education.

Separately, Minister of National Education Yahya Muhaimin revealed on Friday that in accordance with the planned implementation of regional autonomy in January next year, he had proposed for every region an allocation of at least 20 percent of the local budget for education.

"This way, the regions can be directly involved in bettering the people's schooling system as they will have bigger budgets with the autonomy," Yahya said.

The closing of the convention was chaired by Vice President Megawati Soekarnoputri at the Merdeka Selatan vice presidential palace, where she conveyed a message for the convention to contribute to the birth of a political education that supported the development of the nation.

"If we talk about quality of this nation, we talk about the quality of the human resources here," she said.

"That is why we have to figure the way to utilize the limited resources here and properly manage the political education system.

"It's not important to debate 'link and match' because it is a fact that such a concept never becomes operational and stays a slogan," Megawati said, referring to the existing motto for national higher education, which requires university graduates to work and apply the skills and knowledge they obtained during their school days into their lives.

On the sidelines of the ceremony, Megawati also asked why the convention only proposed 25 percent from the state budget.

"Ibu Mega said: 'why not ask for 50 percent?' And I replied that teachers never used to mark up figures. That is the actual figure needed for education," Sutjipto said.

Points of recommendation from the convention included reforms in education, justice values in which education must side with the people, democratization, examples of religious values, the arrangement of education management in facing the decentralization era, the development of community-based education and professionalism and welfare for the education workers.

It also included the development of information technology and the aspects of morality and social and intellectual ability for both students and the educators, as well as protecting children's rights in education.

"The short-term programs included the handling of dropouts, educators' salaries, improvement of the educators' teaching skills and scientific knowledge, sports development and the nine- year basic education scheme," Sutjipto added. (edt)