Educators urge equal access to good education

JAKARTA (JP): The government's "education for all" program, while successful, is no longer sufficient, education experts say.

They are now pushing for "quality education for all".

"Making quality education accessible to the wider public cannot wait much longer," A. Pekerti, director of the Center of Management Training, said on Saturday.

He suggested the massive application of computers in the education world as one way of providing quality education to as large an audience as possible, noting that the cost of software was falling rapidly.

The proposal that greater reliance be placed on computers was widely discussed at a one-day forum on Indonesia's current education policies at the Universitas Kristen Indonesia (UKI).

The former director general of non-formal and special education, W.P. Napitupulu, said that non-formal education -- that provided to those who cannot attend school -- must not discriminate on the basis of age.

"We must promote life-long education," said Napitupulu, who is among the initiators of illiteracy eradication programs pursued through the "Package A" modules launched in 1977.

"There is a broad misunderstanding that non-formal education for the junior high level is only for 13- to 15-year-olds, in accordance with targets of the compulsory nine-years' schooling program," he told the Jakarta Post.

"This is wrong because the State Guidelines stress the right of education for all citizens," he added.

Teachers, university rectors and officials of the ministry of education and culture who attended the forum sought to define a "people-oriented education."

As Indonesia prepares to celebrate its 50th anniversary of independence, the seminar organizers posed the question of whether the country's national education policies were serving the public interest.

Aries Pongtuluran of the UKI called for a higher proportion of the national budget to be allocated to education, from its current 4.9 percent. He noted that Singapore spends 21.6 percent of its budget on education and Japan 12 percent.

Pekerti and other speakers stressed that high quality education could no longer be assumed to be the privilege of those who can pay.

"Education should be elitist, meaning high quality," said linguistics professor Maurits Simatupang, who said the debate on elitist education had wrongly focused only on the costs.

The problem, he said, was identifying different talents, rather than the differing ability of students to pay.

Participants had raised current concerns about the growing establishment of expensive private schools and the fact that wider access to nine years of basic schooling was only just beginning.

The head of the research center of the ministry of education and culture, Sri Hardjoko Wirjomartono, said there was a gross lack of the skills needed in industry, trade and modern agriculture.

He said that some 73 percent of the workforce had only elementary school education or had not even completed elementary school.

"Now we have 3,000 Filipino accountants working here because we lack the people who have the skills," Hardjoko said.

Napitupulu said the demand for non-formal education for secondary high school level had increased, but that the government had not met the demand. "People in various areas have set up their own study groups which they call "Package C", and study the subjects by themselves," he said.

The speakers stressed that greater access to high quality education also means heading towards a more educated society.

However, they rejected the idea that education should be geared to the needs of industry and trade.

"The needs of industry change rapidly given developments in technology, but education must always provide basic skills like systematic thinking," said Simatupang, also a former rector at UKI. (anr)