Teachers need respect, bigger funding encouraged
JAKARTA (JP): To improve education in the country, the deplorable fate of 1.6 million teachers must be addressed, participants in a seminar urged Monday.
Representatives of political parties and observers attending a dialog with three ministers here called for larger allocations of funding in the state budget for education.
The current budget stands at Rp 8.4 trillion, which is three percent of the total.
"A nation is doomed to collapse if it doesn't respect its teachers," Lumi of the Pancasila Flame Party, which failed to make itself eligible to contest the June 7 general election, warned.
Minister of Education and Culture Juwono Sudarsono hinted the welfare of teachers could become better with increased autonomy to provinces and regions.
He suggested that local administrations use opportunities which would be provided with increased autonomy promised through an upcoming new law on regional administration.
The autonomy could be used to arrange for more incentives for accomplished teachers in their respective areas, Juwono said.
Incentives could be in the form of bonuses for accomplished teachers, say 20 percent of salaries, he suggested.
Juwono said, however, that efforts to improve teachers' welfare must be "realistic".
"In the next five years, fighting for teachers to receive allowance supports the same as lecturers' would be impossible to realize, because it would affect the allocation for health, religion, social and labor sectors," he said.
Coordinating Minister for People's Welfare and Poverty Eradication Haryono Suyono, said the salary of teachers would increase along with other civil servants corps this month.
He added the government was currently working on plans to give out scholarships to teachers and their children to help them pursue higher education.
Juwono said that his ministry was working on new education curricula that would incorporate eight principles of competitiveness as endorsed by the World Competitive Council.
The council is affiliated to the World Economic Council in Davos, Switzerland.
The education objectives would seek to educate students to have the proper ability to read, write, speak, count, listen, observe, imagine and "to sensitize, to have empathy with especially those who are poor," Juwono said in talks on education and the global market.
The talks were followed by the launching of two books written by senior journalist Rosihan Anwar, who celebrated his 77th birthday on Monday.
Rosihan described benefits of education under the former Dutch rule, which among others, encouraged students to learn foreign languages by reading literary works and write reports on them. (aan)