Public schools and the public

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.