Jakarta not assigned new state teachers this year
Jakarta not assigned new state teachers this year
Leony Aurora, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
No teachers from among the 110,500 to be recruited by the central
government this year will be allocated to Jakarta, says a top
official of the Jakarta Intermediate and Higher Education Agency.
Agency director Margani Mustar told reporters on Thursday that
he had requested some 2,000 new teachers to replace those who had
retired and would retire in the coming years.
His request was turned down, however.
In August, President Megawati Soekarnoputri signed
Presidential Decree No. 71/2004 authorizing the recruitment of
300,000 civil servants nationwide -- including 42,000 medical
workers and 97,500 teachers for Islamic schools -- during fiscal
2004.
The recruitment drive was imperative, said Margani, to meet
the demand for more teaching staff. The government had imposed a
recruitment freeze from around 1996, and the last major
recruitment drive had been conducted in the mid-1970s.
"We predict that a great number of teachers will be retiring
in the next three or four years," he said, without giving a
specific figure.
To counter the lack of teachers, the administration plans to
employ 3,000 part-time teachers, who will be paid out of
donations from students' parents.
Many part-time teachers were highly motivated and educated --
some even had master's degrees -- said Margani. "They are also
relatively young," he added.
Some observers have expressed worries the age gap between
teachers and that it would be too late for some part-time
teachers to be made full-time as the upper age limit for entry to
the civil service is 35.
Meanwhile, about 2,000 more assistant teachers, to be
officially hired by the central government in December, would be
allocated to Jakarta, said Margani. "We will assign them to
private schools to reinvigorate this sector."
Data from the Jakarta office of the Central Bureau of
Statistics show that in 2003 there were 8,091 teachers working in
kindergartens, 35,415 in elementary schools, 23,400 in junior
high schools and 31,908 in senior and vocational high schools.
The agency is currently appraising just how competent
Jakarta's teachers are, a process that is expected to be fully
completed next year. The mapping exercise will be used to
determine teachers' needs and subsequent training.