Good basic education out of reach for low-income families

Abdul Khalik, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

The government has promised to provide free basic education starting this year. Yet, in reality, the public still have to pay money to enroll their children in state schools and must pay even more if they want them to get a decent education. This week's cover story takes a look at this issue.

The new school year has brought 37-year-old Ella real headaches.

She has two children who will be attending elementary and junior high school.

"I have to pay at least Rp 1 million to get my children enrolled. How can I get such amounts of money, when I have to work hard just to get money to pay for food and our monthly rent?" she wondered.

Ella and her husband Bambang, 40, who have three children, make a living by selling vegetables and fish from a cart. Everyday, they hawk their goods around their neighborhood in the Tanjung Barat area of South Jakarta.

There are two elementary state schools near their residence: elementary school SD No. 3, which offers additional subjects such as computer and English, and SD No. 5 which offers no additional programs.

Ella said that she wanted her son Umar, 6, to attend SD No. 5 rather than SD No. 3, because the former was cheaper.

She realized that her son would get a better education at SD No. 3, but she could not afford the Rp 40,000 per month in fees for the additional programs run by the school, in addition to costs for books and uniforms. At SD No. 5, parents do not need to pay such fees but they do have to spend a certain amount of money to buy books and uniforms from the school rather than from bookstores.

"Free? What's free? We don't have to pay for enrollment and monthly school fees but we have to buy books and uniforms. In the past, we only had to pay Rp 10,000 or Rp 20,000 in monthly tuition fees and nothing else. Now, we have to spend Rp 200,000 (to buy books and uniforms) at the start of the school year," she told The Jakarta Post.

Ella said she was worried that Umar would not be able to continue his study at a good state junior higher school in the future due to the poor quality of education he would get at SD No. 5.

She also considered delaying the enrollment of her first child Budi, 12, into junior high school until next year given the difficult financial condition of the family.

Although most state elementary schools in the Greater Jakarta area officially scrapped enrollment and monthly tuition fees last year, parents still have to pay various expenses in order to get their children educated. Costs include so-called "building maintenance fees", which range from Rp 100,000 to over Rp 5 million, depending on the popularity of the school, as well as uniforms, books, and monthly tuition fees for supplementary lessons.

Meanwhile, state junior high schools in Greater Jakarta still require parents to pay enrollment fees and monthly tuition fees.

Parents have to pay millions of rupiah in enrollment fees if they want to get their children into better state schools that promise a better education. Some are even prepared, or sometimes forced, to pay two or five times higher to enroll their children in a private school.

For Jujuk, 35, who lives not far away from Ella's house, the new school year means she has to wash more of her neighbor's clothes in order to collect enough money to cover the costs to enroll her daughter Indah, 12, in a junior high school.

"She (Indah) and many of her friends at SD No. 05 failed to get into a state junior high school. So, we must register her with a private school. However, we need at least Rp 500,000 to get her enrolled into the cheapest private school," she told the Post.

With four children and an unemployed husband, Jujuk, who earns around Rp 400,000 a month, they were bewildered as to where they would get the money to enroll Indah in school.

"I want my children to get a good quality education so that they can be somebody someday, but from elementary school we could only get them education of poor quality. How can they get a good secondary school? I think only rich people can get into good schools.

"I am afraid that my daughter will end up doing my job while my son will work on a construction site," she said.

According to a 2003 national survey, almost 9 percent of around 40 million school-age children (seven to 15 years old) dropped out of school. Around 70 percent of the dropouts said they quit school because their parents could not afford to pay their school fees.

Ella and Jujuk are among such parents.