Education needs more attention

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)