Teachers defend high school admission fees

Teachers defend high school admission fees

JAKARTA (JP): State school bosses argued yesterday that the
high admission fees for new students this year were being set
purely to enable the schools to cope with the prolonged economic
turmoil.

In interviews with The Jakarta Post yesterday, school
principals and teachers urged the public, including parents and
city officials, to appreciate that they were working with
lilliputian levels of funding from the government.

People, they said, should also understand that the schools'
reasons for hiking the fees were to meet teachers' welfare needs
and to finance the increasingly high maintenance and running
costs, such as buying stationery, that have soared in the wake of
the rupiah's fall against the U.S. dollar.

The admission fees set last month by the city administration,
Rp 33,500 (US$2.25) for junior high schools and Rp 38,500 for
senior high schools, were obviously inadequate to finance the
state schools' basic needs, they said.

"How can schools finance students' laboratory work and other
extracurricular activities?," questioned Arief Rachman, the
principal of SMUN 81 state senior high school, which is also
known as Lab School.

The tariff set by the administration, he said, "was enough
only for low-quality schools. Parents should be aware that they
should strive for education as it's not for free."

He reiterated that education for children was not something
which could be postponed even though the country was in an
economic crisis.

"Education is like people's need for food," said Arief, who is
also a noted education expert.

Ignorance

Most state schools in the capital have ignored the city
administration's guidelines and are collecting an average of Rp
50,000 per student.

Arief's colleague M. Salim at SMPN 2 state junior high school
in Karang Anyar, Central Jakarta, said: "So far, we have tightly
limited our routine expenditure on, for instance, paper,
electricity and water usage.

"How could we survive if students' participation is limited?"

Although city officials have repeatedly warned school managers
not to hike fees beyond the level set by the government, many
schools see no alternative way to resolve their dilemma.

On Monday, the head of the city education and culture office,
Alwi Nurdin, revealed that his office had questioned at least 50
state school principals for allegedly overcharging students.

Four of them would be demoted to ordinary teachers, he said.

Deputy Governor for Social Welfare Affairs Djailani said last
week that schools were forbidden to collect fees for uniforms,
buildings and so on from students in an attempt to halt the
increasing number of unschooled children and drop-outs.

But parents yesterday were still complaining about the
attitude of some state schools.

Nuriah, in her 40s, said that she was asked to pay Rp 230,000
by a teacher at SMPN 08 state junior high school in Central
Jakarta for her child's admission fees and uniform.

"I heard that state schools are forbidden to organize the
supply of student uniforms but the teacher told me that if I
bought the uniforms elsewhere, the color might be different,"
said Nuriah, who finally had to borrow money from her neighbors
to pay the charges. (ind)