Human resources investment pays off

Human resources investment pays off

By Sayidiman Suryohadiprojo

JAKARTA (JP): Reading the newspaper these days one easily gets
the impression that superschools are considered the right answer
for improving the quality of education in this country. How valid
is that opinion?

It is common knowledge that the quality of human resources
play an important, if not decisive role in determining a nation's
place in the future of mankind. To earn a proper place in the
world today, a nation must demonstrate its capability to
cooperate with other nations, but at the same time it must also
be highly competitive. This is true in all aspects of life, be it
in economics and business or in the arts and sports.

It is generally agreed that the quality of human resources in
Indonesia still needs much improvement. An important measure for
that purpose is education.

The experiences of other nations have shown that a highly
qualified elite does not guarantee a high performance of a nation
as a whole. It has been said, for example, that about 30 percent
of the Indian nation, meaning more than 200 million people, has
reached a degree of progress equal to an advanced nation. That
includes the standard of education, the quality of its
scientists, its production capacity, the activity of business and
others. However, the rest of the population is still at a level
of low development, with some at a stage of backwardness.
Therefore the level of progress of India as a whole is still
lower than Indonesia. That can be seen from its income per capita
of about US$310 compared to Indonesia's $780. It seems that to
acquire a high degree of progress for a nation, it is not enough
to have a highly qualified but small elite. But proper attention
must also be given to the progress of the majority of the people.

Superschools certainly provide high quality education. But
only a very small part of the nation will benefit from its
existence since superschools are by nature very limited in
number. We can certainly build a highly qualified elite through
these superschools, but it will be far from enough to satisfy our
requirement since the quality of a nation's human resources
depends on the quality of the majority, not just of a small
minority. We need a highly qualified and effective labor force. A
strong and large middle class must be formed and several
government and private organizations with leaders and managers of
the right standard. That means that apart from superschools,
there is also a need for mass quality education.

The answer to that is the establishment of compulsory
education. The government of Indonesia actually introduced
compulsory education six years ago and has now decided to
increase compulsory education to nine years. This is a very
important decision because it will affect the whole nation. Not
only the people of Java, especially of Jakarta, long for
education. The children of Irian Jaya and Aceh deserve the same
treatment as those in Java. That is a matter of fairness, and
also a way to develop hidden talents in all parts of the nation.
Not only will we gain by having more bright and clever people
coming from all parts of the country, but the unity of the nation
will also be enhanced if every locality receives the same quality
of education.

Considered from the viewpoint of strategy, Indonesia is
certainly on the right track in having a nine-year compulsory
education. However, the problem we face today is the
implementation of that wise decision.

Since it is compulsory education, the government must finance
and execute the nine years of compulsory education, consisting of
six years of elementary school and three years of junior high
school.

To implement it properly, the standard of schools all over the
country must be equal. It is not enough for the government to
have elementary and junior high schools with good standards in
the center of Jakarta, but the same standard must prevail at all
government schools in the whole of Indonesia. An overall standard
of quality in every school is very important because bad
education would negatively affect the nation for a long time.

That means that we need the right amount of teachers with
proper capabilities. We certainly want to have good basic
education, because that would determine the quality of our human
resources. It means that our teachers must perform well enough at
all places.

That requires good training and schooling of teachers, and
that the teaching profession is attractive enough to draw good
students to the teachers colleges. With the present state of
teachers' living standards, only good students with strong
idealism enter the teaching profession. The average good student
prefers not to enter the profession if he or she can enter
another profession with more hope for better living standards. We
need a radical improvement of teachers' pay and allowances before
the teaching profession can become attractive for good students.

We need also build proper school facilities to achieve an
acceptable minimum standard of basic education. Every school must
have good classrooms with a library and a playground; junior high
schools must have laboratories for the study of sciences.
Teachers colleges need dormitories to facilitate education and
training.

All these efforts must be financed and executed by the
government because it is for compulsory education. That cannot be
done as long as government spending on education remains less
than 15 percent of the total government budget. Among the other
ASEAN nations the lowest figure of government spending on
education is 15 percent of their budget, while in Indonesia it is
no more than 8 percent or about 2 percent of Gross Domestic
Product. With this limitation the future of human resources in
Indonesia remains questionable. How can we expect to compete
properly in ASEAN Free Trade Area in 2003 or APEC in 2020 if we
cannot improve our basic education at the right time and with the
right standard?

In addition to basic education the government must also take
care of public senior high schools, universities and colleges.
These institutions can also be established by the private sector.
Today there are more private than government universities and
that tendency will remain.

The private sector must also be encouraged to increase its
amount of senior high schools. Nevertheless, the government has
to take care that the smaller number of government universities
and senior high schools are of the right quality, because they
will become the model for private schools. Moreover, the
government must also build professional high schools, like
technical and agriculture high schools. The private sector is
usually not very enthusiastic about building those kinds of
schools because of their high cost of establishment and
maintenance. All this needs a high government budget on
education.

It seems the government finds it very difficult to
dramatically increase spending on education with the present
situation. Infrastructure building and the improvement of
agriculture, both of which require a huge investment, are given
the highest priority. The government is trying to attract private
participation in the implementation of basic education. First,
that is contradictory to compulsory education. And second, how
can we expect the private sector to invest in so many schools
located all over the country. Perhaps the private sector will
establish one or two schools of high quality, but located in big
cities. That is not what is needed to achieve our objectives.

But the people in government and legislature who make the
decision on government spending should realize that the most
important investment for a nation is the investment in human
resources improvement. They must therefore show more commitment
to develop better education if they are really serious in serving
and building the nation.

Perhaps they can improve government financial capabilities by
trimming the size of the government bureaucracy. The Indonesian
Army has streamlined its organization at least twice in its
history. The time was in 1947 to 1948 when we were fighting the
Dutch colonial government.

Many Army people were forced to leave at that time and it
caused a lot of bitterness and hatred among them. But we had to
do that to make the Army a more effective organization to fight
the Dutch. And we weathered all the problems and consequences
successfully.

Will the present leaders in the Indonesian government be brave
enough to act similarly with its bureaucracy so that we can have
human resources of a higher quality to safeguard the future of
the nation in a world full of competition?