Teachers need respect, bigger funding encouraged
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)