Superschools

Superschools

I wish to draw a crucial link between three articles published in The Jakarta Post (Jan. 26 and Jan. 27, 1996): Providing superschools for all by John Phillips, and Mochtar Buchori's Viewpoint: Where do we go with a rigid school curriculum?; and a related article, Decline in human resources quality worries government by Hermawan Sulistyo.

Mochtar Buchori reiterates the complaints of (state education system) teachers, i.e. "the teaching profession has been degraded into a job without sufficient financial remuneration, without social status and without self-respect. It has become a job fitting only for third rate minds." Since the entire state educational system is, in fact, part of the state bureaucracy, the same point is made by Sulistyo when he states that "the civil service now attracts only the least talented job seekers". Given this scenario, is there hope for much improvement in the educational system?

Phillips in his article concludes that "superschools are readily available and relatively inexpensive," and then adds that providing them "means altering the entire educational system..." The poor quality of the state educational system is a major cause of the emergence of superschools. Sulistyo clearly and very boldly states why we should, unfortunately, have little hope for major improvement in the state educational system in the near future.

Despite Phillips' optimism, I think it is clear that the state cannot presently provide superschools to all. What it can do, however, is provide incentives to superschools (if not financial, at least in terms of reduced bureaucracy and increased freedom concerning curriculum and employment of foreigners). Superschools, aside from educating many Indonesians, provide working examples to the state system and a trickle-down effect is inevitable. There are many ways to facilitate the trickling-down; for example inter-school exchange visits by teachers would increase awareness of both parties of the gap in quality of education.

There should be no question about this gap. Studies in developing countries, including Colombia, the Dominican Republic, the Philippines, Tanzania and Thailand, conclude that "when student background and sample selection biases are held constant, students in private schools outperform students in public schools on verbal and mathematics achievement tests." (Reference: E. Jimenez, M.E. Lockheed and V. Paquco: The relative efficiency of private and public schools in developing countries. The World Bank Research Observer 6(2):205-218, 1991).

NINA STOLTZ

Bogor, West Java