Teachers must have respect and adequate pay

Pieter Van Der Vienhart, Tilburg, Netherlands

Schoolteachers in every nation in the world would likely respond with an emphatic yes if asked, "Do you think that you are overworked and underpaid?" It is a near constant that schoolteachers have a very demanding work experience but are very rarely sufficiently or properly remunerated for their efforts.

We can agree with the sentiment that teachers should work with a kind of idealism because they have a love of children and a love of teaching, but this sentiment should not be taken advantage of and used as a weapon to attack teachers should they reasonably ask for more money for doing the important job they do.

There are few people in the world who would deny that teachers are important. In truth, most people will openly proclaim the importance of teachers, in particular politicians seeking reelection, but such fine words and compliments only go so far and do not help teachers make even the most basic of livings.

Too many teachers in Indonesia receive insufficient salaries for the work that they do, and so out of necessity have to take on another job or even two other jobs. There are a significant number of teachers who, after school has finished, go to other jobs such as teaching private classes or giving tutorials.

The reality is that people need a reasonable income to live and when people, like teachers, work very hard at their jobs it is only reasonable that they be sufficiently rewarded not just with words, but with money.

I am not advocating here that teachers become "cutthroat" in getting as much money as possible, but I am advocating that teachers need and deserve respect for the consistently challenging job that they do. This means that they should be able to expect and achieve certain standards in relation to their salaries.

Greater Jakarta has for a number of years experienced an expansion in the number of private schools in operation. This, it might be concluded, creates more opportunity for teachers, but sadly it has to be said that this is not always the case. In fact, it seems that it only rarely happens.

Recently I spoke with a teacher who had worked at one of these private schools, and she said standards in terms of salary did not exist and this created jealousy and envy within the teaching staff. According to her, within this privately funded and managed school the salary a teacher received depended more on the negotiating skills of the teacher than on teaching qualifications and experience.

Also, the workload in private schools can be devastating for teachers. Their salaries may be marginally better than the salaries at state-run schools, but they will consistently face heavier teaching loads and often have to adapt to curriculums and materials that are new to them.

There is a danger here then that private schools are being established and run along the wrong kind of lines and principles. Teachers that have to struggle with their workloads are familiar with the process that is at hand. Private schools will consistently charge higher entrance fees and tuition, and this immediately creates an expectation among teachers that they will receive higher salaries; an expectation that is also shared by parents.

The "customers" of private schools are the moms and dads who choose to send their children to these schools, paying extra for the privilege of an education that may be seen as being above and beyond the education available to them in standard state-run schools. It must be hoped that they are actually receiving such a service or product, but it seems that the teachers are not really receiving anything better in terms of their working conditions or the benefits they accrue at the end of the working day.

One teacher at a recently established private school told me he saw no great difference between his current school and government schools at which he had worked. In fact, his class sizes were about the same, but his teaching hours had increased. This means that for him the demands of his job had increased considerably, but his salary had not gone up commensurately.

Teachers must be respected, which means not only respect from their students but also from their employers. As more private schools are established in Jakarta and beyond, is the Ministry of National Education exercising enough critical judgment and analysis of these schools? Surely, the government of Indonesia must apply and enforce standards when it comes to private schools.

It is entirely understandable that standards are difficult for state-run schools that suffer from a lack of funds, but private schools are typically targeting those members of Indonesian society who are better able to afford to pay more for education. Standards need to be applied and enforced in terms of academic quality and the achievement of the students, but along with these standards come standards for the teachers at such schools.

Obviously enough, teachers have to be well qualified and/or experienced to do the job at hand, but teachers also need standards in terms of the salaries that they rightly expect.

A powerfully worrying reality is that capable and intelligent people are simply not being attracted to the teaching profession. One teacher at a private school who possessed excellent English, computing and teaching qualifications found that he had to leave teaching because "the salary was just too bad". This shows how much teachers need to be respected in terms of salary. This now former teacher had dedicated much of his education and training to becoming a teacher, but he could not afford to continue in his chosen field.

Indonesia cannot afford to go on losing good people from the education sector. To keep good teachers and advance Indonesian education, teachers need salary respect; not because of avarice but because of common sense.

The writer is an education consultant. He can be reached at pietervdv48@hotmail.com.