Govt to set up makeshift schools throughout Aceh

Govt to set up makeshift schools throughout Aceh

Fabiola Desy Unidjaja, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

The government said on Tuesday that it planned to immediately set
up makeshift schools in some 95 locations near refugee camps in
Aceh to allow students in the tsunami-hit province to resume
their education activities.

Minister for National Education Bambang Sudibyo explained that
school activities in devastated areas during the first month will
be focussed more on efforts to deal with psychological and
emotional impacts on students, helping them overcome the trauma
of the disaster.

"We have also ordered surviving schools (in the province) to
accept students from other (damaged) schools, and to set up two
shifts, one for the morning and one in the afternoon," he told
reporters following a meeting with President Susilo Bambang
Yudhoyono.

The massive undersea quake and subsequent tsunami on Dec. 26
washed away many school buildings in Aceh. The province's west
coast areas bore the brunt of the disaster.

According to one estimate some 420 school buildings across
Aceh were destroyed by the disaster, and some 1,000 teachers
died.

School activities in the provincial capital of Banda Aceh are
expected to resume on Jan. 26. Some schools in Meulaboh, where
more than 28,000 people have been confirmed dead, reopened on
Monday. The mood on the first day of school was somber as many
students were still traumatized by the calamity and by
aftershocks of up to 6.0 on the Richter scale. Many students
still preferred to stay in their temporary camps, which some
claimed might undermine efforts by the government to resume
school activities and help create a sense of normalcy in the
province. Getting children back to school is seen as crucial in
the early phases of Aceh's rehabilitation process.

The government plans to bring in new teachers from outside the
province to facilitate the rehabilitation of the school system in
Aceh.

"We have received offers from several universities to send
their students to support the education process. State-owned
Gadjah Mada University will send some 500 students to the
province to teach," Bambang said.

The minister said that for the first few weeks school
activities will be focussed on psychological healing for the
children

"We will begin with the cognitive aspects after they have
recovered from the trauma, but we will do our best to ensure that
they are not left behind compared to students in the rest of the
country," Bambang said.

In relation to higher education, he said that the province
faced a difficult problem amid a serious shortage of lecturers,
citing as an example that the main Syiah Kuala University had
lost 96 lecturers with another 76 missing.

"We will ask other universities to accept Aceh students, or we
will have to provide substitute lecturers for them," he said.

Separately, chairman of the National Commission for Child
Protection (Komnas PA) Seto Mulyadi said that the commission
would soon launch a national correspondence program between
Acehnese students with other children across the country as part
of efforts to overcome children's trauma.

"Acehnese children need love and attention, and hopefully by
corresponding with their peers outside the province they will be
able to talk through and finally overcome their trauma," Seto
said.