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.