Teachers are badly needed but poorly paid

Teachers are badly needed but poorly paid

Debbie A. Lubis, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Being underpaid is something that school teacher Dini never
dwells on.

Teaching English at a state elementary school in South
Jakarta, Dini only earns a monthly salary of Rp 150,000, one
third of the minimum monthly provincial wage for workers who are
relatively less educated.

"Actually, we loath paying her this low since she is a
graduate of a prestigious university, but the government has not
hired new teachers since 1984, so we have to pay her out of our
own budget," Rubiastuti, a senior colleague of Dini's, told The
Jakarta Post.

Rubiastuti has been a teacher at the school for 30 years and
is paid only Rp 1.2 million monthly.

She said Dini was hired on a nonpermanent basis two years ago
because the school could not pay adequate attention to its 265
students with only 12 teachers.

Dini is not alone in the country, which is in need of 200,000
teachers for state kindergartens and primary and secondary
schools.

"It's like carrying a time bomb that could explode at
anytime," Sutjipto, rector of the Jakarta National University
(formerly the Jakarta Teachers Training Institute), told the Post
on Thursday.

He said he had warned the government many times about the
potential shortage of teachers resulting from the policy of not
hiring new teachers.

"We may have had an oversupply of teachers at one time, but we
must realize that soon those teachers will retire and we'll need
new recruits to replace them," Sutjipto said, adding that his
college has been forced to cut down on the number of students
admitted.

Sutjipto emphasized the need for the government to involve
other parties that produce, hire and pay teachers before
formulating a policy on education and build solid coordination
among them.

"We must have a long-term national education platform,
otherwise we will only make a shortsighted decision that needs
revision over and over," Sutjipto said.

Earlier, Coordinating Minister for People's Welfare Jusuf
Kalla said the government planned to recruit some 50,000 teachers
this year and reopen the school for teachers' education (SPG).

Sutjipto said that he would prefer the old system of training
teachers to be reintroduced rather than implementing a crash
program to produce teachers. He said a crash program would result
in low-quality teachers because those trained would be senior
high students.

"Offer attractive compensation to university graduates. They
will be tempted to pursue a teaching career if the standard of
salary or the margin of benefits are improved," he said.

Sutjipto believed that university graduates from science or
social programs needed only intensive training to learn how to
teach.

"We could teach them some teaching techniques through a short
course because they have already acquired the knowledge," he
said.

Before becoming universities, state teachers training
institutes nationwide held classes for university graduates who
wished to teach in junior or senior high schools. The programs
lasted a semester, with successful trainees receiving a
government-sanctioned license to teach.

Indra Djati Sidi, Director General of Primary and Intermediary
Education at the Ministry of National Education, said on Friday
the government was planning to hire more temporary teachers to
fill the shortage of teachers.

"We will recruit university graduates immediately in a bid to
guarantee the success of nine-year basic education program in the
villages because the teacher shortage is a real problem. We
cannot wait for a new law to solve it," he said.

Indra said that there would be an attractive package offered
to lure the university graduates to fill the vacant teacher
positions.

"Let say we pay a (part-time) teacher Rp 200,000 monthly, we
still can cover the students' needs by allocating Rp 480 billion
from our budget," he said.

Indra said that the ministry could not recruit permanent
teachers because there were many employees who had not obtained
their civil servant status since the last decade.

He said the government would recruit 85 percent of the new
teachers needed in provinces nationwide, while regional
administrations would handle the rest.