Lampung schools still charging poor fees
Oyos Saroso H.N., The Jakarta Post, Bandarlampung
Construction worker Suparjan was surprised when his eldest son asked him for Rp 100,000 (US$10) to pay his tuition fees at Bandarlampung State Junior High School Number 2.
He said that he thought the school had recently received funds from the government's School Operations Assistance Scheme, which started to distributed money to schools across the country this year to ease the burden on the poor in educating their children.
"But I had to pay the tuition fees even though it meant borrowing the money from a relative. If I didn't pay, I'm afraid my son would not be able to go to school as all of his friends have already paid," said Suparjan, not his real name.
The Jakarta Post has discovered that the junior high school's budget for 2005-2006 has increased from Rp 300 million the previous year to Rp 1 billion, as a result of which the school claims it still has to charge fees.
Ostensibly increasing a school's budget is a common strategy used by school to keep imposing various fees on students even though assistance has been received from the assistance scheme.
Apart from Bandarlampung Junior High No. 2, other schools that have received assistance money but are still charging tuition fees include Gajahmada junior high and Al Azhar elementary and junior high schools in Bandarlampung.
Junior High No. 2's principal, Sartono, said that the school only received assistance amounting to Rp 224 million for 700 students while it cost Rp 1 billion to run the school.
"The shortfall of Rp 775 million has to be collected from the parents. That's why we need their participation so as to ensure that the school's programs can continue," Sartono said.
Al Azhar junior high school deputy principal Sutrisno said the school had collected tuition fees from the students of poor families as it had yet to finish its list of students from disadvantaged backgrounds.
At the moment, all students, whether from well-off or disadvantaged backgrounds, had to pay tuition fees, he added.
"We're still processing the data on students from poor backgrounds. That's why we still can't use the assistance payments to relieve such students of the obligation to pay tuition fees," he said.
On average, Sutrisno said that around 70 of the school's 664 students were from disadvantaged backgrounds. However, the assistance payment of Rp 215 million received by the school would not be enough to exempt all 70 students from paying fees, he said.
The school currently subsidized tuition fee of all students. For instance, a first year student had Rp 10,000 cut from the Rp 75,000 monthly tuition fee, while Rp 9,000 was cut from second and third year fees of Rp 55,000.
He said the assistance payment of Rp 215 million, of which 25 percent had been allotted for buying books, was not enough to pay for the school's operations, which would cost Rp 650 million in 2005-2006.
The fact that students from poor backgrounds are still being required to pay tuition fees has been criticized by the director of Bandarlampung's Municipal Education and Library Service, Zaini Nurman.
He said with the paying out of the assistance, all students from poor families should be exempted from paying school fees.
"We've asked all the schools to provide data on their budgets for last year and this year. We've also asked them to provide the details of how the assistance is used to find out whether the school has effectively used the money or simply raised its budget, and is still burden students from poor families with various fees," Zaini said.
Chairman of Lampung province's School Operational Assistance Monitoring Team, Nazarudin Tugakratu, said there's no excuse for school to charged tuition fees to underprivileged students.
"A school that receives the money from the assistance fund should prioritize students from poor families and stop charging them tuition fees," he said.
The deputy director of Lampung's provincial education agency, Adeham, said he would immediately deploy inspectors to monitor the use of the assistance money.
"We receive many reports regarding the assistance scheme, so we'll assign monitors to check out the schools," Adeham said, adding that the inspectors' findings would determine the sanctions to be imposed on violating the rules of the scheme.
The sanctions, he added, could range from administrative sanctions to exclusion from the assistance scheme.
Meanwhile, the secretary of the Teachers' Dignity Forum in Lampung, Gino Vanollie, said the increasing of school budgets was a common ruse employed by school principals involved in corruption.
He said most of the schools receiving the assistance in Lampung had raised their budgets by up to 150 percent.
He said that the paying of grants worth Rp 235,000 per student per year for an elementary school student was resulting in the schools being "overwhelmed" with money.
"If a school has 200 students, and many have more students, think how much money it will get. Previously, most schools only managed tens of millions of rupiah, but with the money they are getting now, what will happen next?" Gino asked.