Ensuring quality education no simple matter

Ensuring quality education no simple matter

Fuad Abdul Hamied
Indonesia University
of Education (UPI)
Bandung, West Java

The scope of the implementation of the regional autonomy law
is multi-dimensional. It pervades all sectors of human needs and
activities, including educational activities.

Regional autonomy is to be established with the principle of
decentralization, that is, the handing over of authority by the
government to the regions within the framework of the Unified
Republic of Indonesia. Decentralization must be coupled with the
transfer of funds, facilities, and human resources that are
relevant to the powers that have been handed over.

Under the term educational personnel, we subsume teachers and
such other educational personnel as administrators, curriculum
developers, librarians, learning resource technicians, and
counselors. Strategic current issues concerning educational
personnel consist of quality, welfare, and preservice and
inservice education.

When dealt with in the spirit of regional autonomy, these
strategic issues will need a comprehensive policy at the national
level that will provide a basis and at the same time coalescing
ingredients for all educational personnel throughout the country
so that they can become productive participants in regional and
national development.

The national policy will be instrumental in achieving the
objectives of national education and should become a facilitator
for the appointment and mobility of educational personnel in all
regions in the country.

Quantitatively, teachers constitute the largest portion of
educational personnel and play a very strategic role in our
nation building and development.

However, quantitative fulfillment is not always automatically
reflected in qualitative stature. As regards teacher quality, we
have witnessed and experienced different episodes in our
educational arena indicating that it is not as simple matter as
it would appear, and is supported by such other proximate factors
as teacher welfare and teacher education -- two factors that are
interdependent upon one another and need to be promoted within an
effective and efficient educational management. In this regard,
the concept of school-based management implemented within the
spirit of decentralization has been brought to our schools'
attention. This concept will only be fruitful if it is framed
within a quality education policy that is well-founded at the
national level.

Teacher support and welfare are commonly conceded as still
being inadequate. This inapt degree of welfare has been publicly
acknowledged as a triggering factor for the low social status and
recognition of teachers in society, which, in turn, brings about
a collapse in their commitment to their own profession. It has
also been pointed out in various forums that the unacceptable
level of welfare our educational personnel have been accorded to
date has become one of the causes to the unattractiveness of the
educational profession to high school graduates, the very people
who are potential teachers.

Thus our efforts to maintain quality education have fallen
into a vicious circle phenomenon -- where to begin creating a
breakthrough undertaking is still an important question that
policy and decision-makers must find an appropriate answer to.
Although doubts has been cast here and there regarding teacher
welfare as an effective point of departure for improving
education in our country, I believe that this would be worth the
effort and that it will have a snowball effect on the improvement
in all aspects related to the preservice and inservice education
of teachers.

The simple logic behind all these arguments is that when
teacher support and welfare are attractive, the teaching
profession as a whole will become an attractive profession that
will draw better caliber candidates to it and, as a consequence,
lift up and better synergize the teaching-learning activities
that take place in teacher education institutes.

We are fully cognizant that the roles of teachers have a
snowball effect on improving the state of the country, and that
teacher roles will have a significant effect in creating a new
generation of Indonesian people who are competitive in the
regional and global setting. On Jan. 28, 1992, a framework
agreement on enhancing economic cooperation was signed by six
ASEAN leaders. AFTA (ASEAN Free Trade Area) is part of the
framework agreement, which says, among other things, that all
member states agree to establish and participate in the AFTA
within 15 years.

Besides trade, the agreement also covers cooperation in
industry, minerals, energy, finance, banking, food, agriculture,
forestry and transportation. Other areas of cooperation include
cooperation in research and development, technology transfer,
tourism promotion, human resource development and other economy-
related areas.

Cooperation in all these areas, especially in human resource
development, has become a burning issue as it has forced us to
assess seriously the quality and competitiveness of our existing
human resources. Therefore we Indonesians need to realize that we
live and work in a global marketplace for goods, services and
ideas. As a result, we educators are confronted with a challenge
to deliver school leavers who are competent not only to function
professionally in an international environment, but who are also
equipped to make personal and public-policy decisions as citizens
of international society.

If in reality, the issue of teacher quality and welfare is not
properly addressed by both the central and regional government,
nothing beneficial can be expected in the bustling sphere of
global competition.

What is the point of the regional autonomy law if it does not
contribute to the betterment of education in each region? What is
the point of enacting educational rules and regulations at the
national level when the financial and managerial commitment to
education is not fully serious? What's the point of engaging in
political discourse when no meaningful action is taken at all
levels of implementation?

In brief, sustaining quality education is no simple matter.