Education too commercialized: PDI

JAKARTA (JP): Escalating school fees are threatening the country's efforts to promote education for all, the Indonesian Democratic Party (PDI) warned yesterday.

Spokesman for the minority party Bambang Mintoko said the growing tendency among urban schools to "commercialize" education was particularly worrying.

"The increasing educational costs that parents have to shoulder will deprive more and more common people of a proper education," he said when presenting the party's views on the 1998/2003 State Policy Guideline to a People's Consultative Assembly plenary session.

"The current trend suggests that only the wealthy will soon be able to afford to send their children to school," he added.

Bambang said that super schools were so expensive that parents' socioeconomic status was often the prime consideration in admitting students.

"More super schools have been built. Many are becoming exclusive and cater to wealthy families of certain ethnic backgrounds," he said in an obvious reference to people of Chinese descent.

The PDI, which is a 1973 amalgam of nationalist and tiny Christian parties, warned that such exclusiveness could spark social envy and deepen the existing educational disparity.

The government-backed Golkar faction highlighted that the government's nine-year mandatory education ruling had increased the proportion of elementary school graduates who continued into secondary education to 72.5 percent in 1997/1998 from 43.4 percent in 1993/1994.

The government's target for the sixth Five-Year Development Plan, which will end this month, was only 66.2 percent, faction spokesman Fahmi Idris said.

The faction also noted that over the past five years, the number of college lecturers had increased to 127,200 from 88,700 five years ago. (pan)