Experts and parents concerned over education gap

The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

These are the months when many parents of school-age children are very worried, especially parents from the lower income brackets.

One can even hear conversations on buses between mothers expressing the fear that their children will not be able to attain a good education due to financial constraints.

"We have to know our limits," 32-year-old Susilowati told The Jakarta Post recently about the reason behind her decision to opt for a less sought-after senior high school for her 15-year-old son. "He is not a bright student and we only have a limited amount of money."

As if the unwritten fact that good schools are expensive was not enough to worry poor people, the government made this fact official through a regulation issued last month.

In the Regulation on National Education Standards, all schools are to be evaluated according to standards set by the newly- established National Education Standardization Board (BSNP).

The board, which is said to be independent but which in fact has all of its 15 members directly appointed by the national education minister, is tasked with developing national standards on content, processes, competencies, human resources, infrastructure, management and funding in the education field.

Schools will then be labeled as "independent" if they meet the national requirements and "standard" if they are considered to be below average.

Meanwhile, a draft government regulation on the funding and management of education provides that those schools designated as "independent" can charge higher fees than the standard fees set by the board.

The Ministry of National Education's director general for primary and secondary education, Indra Djati Sidi, argues that the scheme is intended to cross-subsidize the education of the poor.

However, experts have opposed the draft, saying that it is discriminatory and would further segregate students based upon economic status.

"There is already a segmentation of schools as between the middle to upper classes and the lower classes," the director of Paramadina University's Institute for Educational Reform, Hutomo Dananjaya, said.

The new ruling, if it takes effect, will institutionalize discrimination, especially in public schools, said Hutomo.

Hutomo argued that the regulation contradicted the National Education Law (No. 20/2003), adding that the government had the responsibility of providing education that was non-discriminatory in terms of religion, race, ethnicity, gender and other education-irrelevant considerations.

Meanwhile, education expert Arief Rachman, who is also the head of the Jakarta Laboratory School, said that in order to prevent gaps between "rich" and "poor" schools and to avoid discrimination, it would be necessary to map out schools based on their financial capabilities, as long as this did not involve labeling.

"The government and local administrations need to know which schools are financially stable and which are not so that funding can be allocated appropriately," he said.

Arief also said that this identification of schools needed to be balanced by an educational process that bridged the gap between the "rich" and "poor" schools.

This was important as currently in Jakarta alone the public was already familiar with the division between popular and less popular schools, particularly as regards state schools. (003)