RI teacher absenteeism 'third-highest' in world

Dewi Santoso The Jakarta Post/Jakarta

Moonlighting teachers and the lack of toilets in many schools are among the reasons for alarming levels of the absence rate of elementary school teachers in Indonesia, a survey suggested.

The reason for the highest absence rate of 36.4 percent was because "several grades are being taught in one classroom", the study recently issued by the SMERU Research Institute said.

It involved 147 state and private elementary schools in 10 major and small towns. The average absence rate was 19 percent, the third-highest in the world after Uganda (39 percent) and India (25 percent).

SMERU conducted the study for the World Development Report 2004 issued by the World Bank, whose Global Development Network of research institutes compiled eight country case studies on education. The teachers' absence rate, part of the Report's theme on public services in education, were also surveyed in Bangladesh, Ecuador, Papua New Guinea, Peru and Zambia apart from Indonesia, India and Uganda.

During the research in October 2002 and March 2003 SMERU workers made impromptu visits twice to each school and observed over 1,400 teachers.

SMERU disclosed that schools where 45 percent of the teachers were playing truant could not provide clear excuses for their absence, while 36 percent were said to be sick or on leave.

Further interviews revealed that the employment status of teachers, educational background and access to school facilities like restrooms were the main reasons for absenteeism.

Part-time teachers were found to have a higher absence rate (27.8 percent) as compared with those working full-time (18.2 percent).

"We strongly recommend that more part-time teachers be made full-time teachers because of the large gap in income" which most likely leads to moonlighting, a SMERU researcher, Alexander Arifianto, said on Sunday. Moonlighting would explain much of the unclear excuses found at the schools where teachers were found to be absent, he added.

Part-time teachers receive a monthly salary of Rp 50,000 (US$5.5) to Rp 450,000, whereas full-time teachers earn Rp 782,000 to Rp 955,000, the survey says.

Minimum monthly provincial wages this year range from Rp 400,000 to Rp 700,000, depending on living costs in each province. Jakarta has set the minimum regional wage at Rp 671,550.

The study also discovered that, within higher education, teachers were more frequently absent without leave. The absence rate of those who hold diplomas is 21.9 percent, compared with 4.1 percent for those with lower degrees.

"Teachers with higher education ...have greater opportunities to find side jobs," said the survey.

Another reason for absence is the lack of school facilities, such as nonavailability of restrooms (29.2 percent) and inadequate classrooms (36.4 percent).

SMERU said the higher the level of absence of teachers, the lower their students' school performance, particularly in Indonesian language and mathematics.

In schools where the absence rate of teachers stands at 20.4 percent, the average grades of students in math and Indonesian language are 59.5 and 74.6, after tests.

However, in a school where the absence rate stands at 18.9 percent, the average in math is 80.5, with 94.0 in Indonesian.

Worse still, the study found that in schools in some villages where teacher absenteeism was relatively high, most fourth-year students failed to pass dictation tests.

Apart from promoting qualified part-time teachers to full-time status, SMERU's other recommendations include the improvement of school facilities and buildings.

According to 2001 data the country employs 1,129,475 elementary school teachers. SMERU estimated the country needed at least 236,500 more of them.

President Megawati Soekarnoputri said on Saturday she had signed a decree on the appointment of 300,000 new teachers this year. It was unclear, however, whether they would all teach elementary school students.

The inadequate number of teachers has been blamed partly on the low education budget.

The government has allocated Rp 15.3 trillion for the education sector, or 3.49 percent of the total state budget of Rp 439.8 trillion in 2004 -- only 1.2 percent higher than the Rp 12.8 trillion allocated in 2003.

Its Southeast Asian neighbors like Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines and Singapore, respectively, allocated 23 percent, 22 percent, 20 percent and 19 percent of their state budgets to education.