Over 30% elementary schools falling apart: Official

Over 30% elementary schools falling apart: Official

Yuli Tri Suwarni, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Director General for Elementary Education at the Ministry of
Education Indradjati Sidi revealed on Monday that more than 30
percent of elementary schools were either ruined or in a state of
irreversible decay.

He admitted that the decrepit state of the buildings was just
one of the many problems plaguing the education system in the
country.

Indradjati said that a large percentage of state elementary
schools could no longer be used safely and all school activities
had to be conducted outside because the government had not
allocated the necessary funds to rebuild them.

He said the buildings could no longer be used, partly because
of old age as they were built around 30 years ago, and partly
because many were damaged in conflict zones like Aceh, Sulawesi
and Maluku.

The number of elementary schools run by the government is
149,000, in urban and rural areas across the country.

"The government and the House of Representatives should give
serious attention to this problem because this has made the
elementary education problem more complicated. If the nation is
committed to improving the quality of education in general in the
future we need to do something," he said after inaugurating a
training center for teachers in Bandung, West Java.

He said that the government had allocated Rp 625 billion in
the 2004 state budget to rehabilitate the schools but the amount
was far from enough so they would have to prioritize schools that
could no longer be used and were located in densely-populated
areas.

The government has said it would raise the education budget to
20 percent of the national budget as stipulated by the amended
Constitution, but it has only allocated about one-fifth of that.

Hundreds of thousands of students in Aceh, Maluku and Central
Sulawesi, have been studying in tents, mosques and churches since
many of the schools have been razed during the various conflicts
in those areas.

Maluku has sought financial assistance from foreign donors,
including the European Union, to rebuild school buildings damaged
during the 1999-2002 religious conflict that killed more than
6,000 people and displaced more than 750,000 others.

In Aceh, the martial law administration has begun
rehabilitating more than 600 elementary and high schools which
were burned down since President Megawati Soekarnoputri declared
martial law on May 19, 2003.

Ki Supriyoko, a professor at the Sarjanawiyata Tamansiswa
University in Yogyakarta, said last week that the poor condition
of the school buildings was just one component of the pathetic
state of education in the country.

The situation is not new because the country has had these
problems since the country's independence in 1945, he said: "The
real problem is that the nation has failed to devote serious
attention to developing education."

Supriyoko said further that the state elementary schools had
been also running short of educational facilities and teaching
staff.

"Many of the teachers in elementary school are not permanent
and many local administrations have deployed security personnel
to teach students in elementary and high schools in remote
areas," he said.