Incentive offered for teachers to work overtime

JAKARTA (JP): Teachers of intermediate schools are being offered Rp 1,000 an hour (US 47 cents) to work overtime beginning in July, the Ministry of Education announced yesterday.

Director of Basic Education Djauzak Achmad said the new incentive program is being launched as part of the government's efforts to ensure the success of the new nine-year compulsory education plan that requires children to attend three years of junior high school as well as six years of primary school.

One of the obstacles in implementing the compulsory education plan is the shortage of teachers at intermediate schools. The new incentive program is intended to partially redress the problem, Djauzak told reporters yesterday.

The government has already taken steps over the last 12 months to improve the welfare of teachers, one of the lowest paid professions in the country, and strengthen the career promotion system.

The Rp 1,000 an hour incentive is a major improvement over the Rp 250 offered previously, but still does not match the Rp 3,000 to Rp 15,000 teachers can earn by private tutoring, now a common practice among teachers to supplement their income.

Teachers at government schools are contracted to work 24 hours a week, and anything above that is treated as overtime.

Djauzak agreed that ideally, the salaries of government teachers should be improved more in commensurate with the strong responsibility they carry, but said that budget constraints make it impossible at present to increase their pay.

"The government realizes that teachers play a big role in making the compulsory education program successful, that's why we've decided to increase the incentive," he said.

President Soeharto, in launching the nine-year compulsory education scheme on Monday, called for a nationwide effort to ensure its success. The plan relies on the support of private education institutions to provide extra seats, and on parents to encourage their children to stay in school until 15 years of age.

Djauzak said the teachers' shortage in Indonesia has been aggravated by the fact that most teachers prefer to work in big cities and many of them shun working in isolated villages.

For example, he said that a junior high school in West Sumatra has a surplus of 30 teachers.

The teacher shortage would not be as serious if we could redistribute the 1.3 million teachers throughout the country, he said.

Many schools cope with the problem by asking teachers to take on as many subjects as they can.

He added that some schools can still function effectively with only three teachers because they only have small classes. (01)