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.