Educators urge equal access to good education

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)