Public schools and the public

Ardimas Sasdi, Jakarta

The new academic year, which began this week, marked the end of a tiring and costly struggle for many students and their parents. This happened because the era of stiff competition to enter the right school, including public schools, is not only a battle of wits as it was two decades ago.

To get a seat at a public school now, aspiring students must be smart and financially able as the law of the market dictates that schools need both bright students to improve their image and money to finance their operations. The idea of public schools as people-friendly is now a thing of the past.

For their part, public schools, though still receiving funds from the government, as a stakeholder, have to find a balance between the two elements in order to survive, especially after the government drastically cut the budget for education in the wake of the economic crisis that hit the country in 1997.

The tough competition to get a space at a government school, which has become an interesting phenomena in recent years, is the result of parents' desire to send their children to public school due to improvements in public school education and the low tuition compared with private schools.

Given this situation, the government has no option but to call on the public, as another stakeholder, to contribute more funds to public schools.

Parents have to spend more money to pay for various fees -- "admission fee", "development fee", "participation fee", "voluntary donation". The amount of the fees varies from one school to another depending on its status as a favorite or non- favorite among students and their parents.

This year some favorite public high schools (SMAN) in Medan, North Sumatra, set the admission fee at Rp 2.5 million (US$260) per student. SMAN I in Depok, a top public school in the suburb south of Jakarta, charged new students a Rp 2 million admission fee, up Rp 1 million from the 1992 fee.

The top public high schools in Jakarta, like SMAN 8 in South Jakarta, charged admission fees ranging from Rp 7 million to more than Rp 10 million, depending on the grade of the new students, a 100 percent increase from three years ago. The amount is still half as much as the Rp 10 million to Rp 20 million admission fees charged by top private Islamic schools or Christian schools.

Tuition at top public schools range from Rp 200,000 to Rp 400,000 per month, a relatively large amount of money for many parents.

Admission fees and tuition form the largest part of public schools' income. At SMAN 1 Depok, for example, parents of students contributed Rp 1.23 billion, or more than 93 percent of the school's budget of Rp 1.32 billion for the 2004-2005 academic year. Only 6 percent of the budget, or Rp 90 million, came from the government.

A large chunk of the budget usually goes toward such needs as the purchase of stationery, maintenance fees, the renovation and construction of new classrooms and the payment of incentives to teachers to supplement their meager incomes.

But the significant participation of parents in the financing of the schools, which constitutes the transfer of the financial burden from the government to the public, has not been accompanied by a change in the attitude and mind-set of the public school management. Many schools are still not transparent in drafting and implementing the school budget.

Many schools still treat school committees as objects to be exploited rather than as an equal partner, and consult them only when the schools need money.

In the future, school committees should be given the power to draft a school's budget together with the school's management, and to supervise the budget's implementation to minimize waste and inefficiency. The budget should be audited and the results of the audit reported at an annual meeting of parents.

The principle of fairness must be upheld in determining admission fees and tuition, taking into account the economic situation of the students and the geographical area of each school.

To build trust in the school committees, the mechanisms for electing members should be overhauled to allow for full participation by parents. Now key posts on the school committees at some public schools are occupied by people close to the schools' principals, a situation that allow collusion between the schools and the committees.

There have been stronger calls for a greater transparency in the management of school budgets, the empowerment of school committees and a revision of the system under which students are graded.

The new school year is the right moment for such changes.

Ardimas Sasdi is a staff writer for The Jakarta Post. He can be contacted at ajambak@berkeley.edu.