Teaching on Bawean island requires rare dedication

Indra Harsaputra, The Jakarta Post, Bawean Island

The principal of a state elementary school in Tambak district, Nursyahid, hurriedly entered the seven-meter-by-eight-meter classroom.

"I am late because my motorcycle broke down on my way here," Nursyahid told his pupils.

A few moments later, he took out a pencil from his shirt pocket and took the roll call of fourth to sixth graders in the Teluk Dalam Dawang elementary school on Bawean Island.

Nursyahid has to travel seven kilometers from his house to the school over rough terrain due to the lack of access roads. During the rainy season he is often injured when he falls of his motorcycle. Also, the bike often breaks down due to the treacherous conditions of roads. Furthermore, he has to teach both the first and sixth graders, numbering 48 pupils in total, in turns, because there is no other teacher to replace him.

"That's the challenge of becoming a teacher and at the same time a principal as well as a school administrative staffer in an isolated area. Many teachers have resigned because of the job conditions, including the low salary," said Nursyahid, who has been teaching at the same school for 10 years and now receives a salary of Rp 1 million as a civil servant. He said that he would continue teaching as he loved to teach and his family had been living on the island since 1974.

M. Yasin, former principal and teacher at another school in Bawean, chose to resign as a teacher in 1992 due to the low pay and heavy workload of the job.

The native resident of Bawean is now involved in the onyx stone polishing business and is able to enjoy an income of around Rp 6.5 million per month, a considerable amount compared to his salary of Rp 600,000 per month as a teacher in 1992.

"I'm better off financially now compared to when I was a teacher and could only eat sweet potatoes. I can buy hectares of land after becoming a businessman," he said.

The head of Sangkapura district education and culture suboffice in Bawean, Zulfa Usman, acknowledges that teaching on the island, which lies about 150 km from Surabaya, requires determination.

Zulfa said many teachers from Surabaya, Gresik and other cities in East Java quit their teaching posts in Bawean nearly every year due to unfavorable conditions such as the rundown school buildings, poor accessibility and the distance between their hometown and Bawean.

Data from the office indicates that there are 281 teachers in the two districts of Bawean, Tambak and Sangkapura, who teach 10,567 students in 121 schools from kindergarten to senior high school levels.

"There is still an undersupply of teachers in Bawean and it is hard to find teachers who want to work here," Zulfa told the Post.

- Related story on page 17