The Plight of Teachers and Regional Education

Education remains a crucial issue in Indonesian discourse. The government employs various methods to improve teacher welfare generally, but what is the current state of affairs?

‘Unsung hero teacher’ is a popular slogan in Indonesia. A teacher’s duty is considered noble, sincere, and wholehearted in helping to instil values, morals, and intelligence in students. However, this slogan is now less relevant because, in reality, teacher salaries are far from adequate. They are demanded to be ‘perfect’, to adapt to the world of technology, to innovate, and even to fulfil job qualifications in the form of teaching certificates.

Meeting basic needs remains a question for teachers. In recent years, the budget for the education sector has increased, reaching Rp757.8 trillion, approximately 20% of the state budget. In detail, around 50% of these funds are still allocated for operational needs, not for teachers.

Furthermore, the distribution of funds differs in each region, meaning teacher salaries are adjusted according to the regional budget. This is one factor explaining why teacher salaries are inadequate. In East Kutai, for instance, some teachers who have served for more than 10 years still earn in the range of 2 to 3 million rupiah per month.

In many cases, honorary teachers are paid less than 500,000 rupiah per month. This is certainly far below the Regional Minimum Wage, which is considered a decent standard of living. Compared to countries in the Southeast Asian region, the income of Indonesian teachers tends to be smaller than that of neighbouring countries like Malaysia, Thailand, and especially Singapore. In this regard, teacher salaries deserve more attention, not merely to be considered a ‘blessing’.

Instead of improving the standard of teacher salaries, especially in the regions, the Indonesian government is prioritising the Free Nutritious Meal programme, which costs trillions of rupiah. This is worsened by the government’s commitment to spend around 0.27% of the education budget on creating Sekolah Garuda.

In this context, teachers in the regions, especially, must become part of the long-term priority. Salary is no longer a ‘rare’ commodity, considering that teacher welfare will certainly have implications for teaching quality.

When Prabowo was defence minister and now as president, he repeatedly stated that Indonesia is a wealthy country with abundant resources. This is indeed evident, at a glance, in history, where colonial powers heavily exploited Indonesia’s resources as trade commodities or marketable goods. However, the current government is unable to manage or accommodate the effective distribution of resources.

The workload between education in cities and regions is severely imbalanced. This means teachers in regional or rural areas have a workload dozens of times heavier than their urban counterparts. A study from Muhammadiyah University of Surabaya found that one inhibiting factor is low learning motivation.

An environment unsupportive of the early generation results in them lacking a ‘passion’ for learning. In another case study, in Bintuni Bay, independent interview results proved that students’ motivation to continue their studies is very low, even when wanting to pursue an undergraduate degree.

A 2025 report from the Central Statistics Agency shows that the percentage of the rural population who have never attended school reached 6.51 percent, and another 70.55 percent are no longer in education. Besides motivational factors, infrastructure is also a vital problem. The poor condition of regional educational infrastructure gives rise to the phenomenon of urbanisation—the movement of regional teachers to cities.

This not only causes an accumulation of teacher quotas in cities but also increases the workload of teachers in regions who have more students compared to instructors. It is no wonder that teachers in the regions have an erratic workload, exceeding their mandatory working hours. Additionally, teachers are forced to teach more than one subject to meet subject requirements.

The quality of rural and urban teachers also differs. Not all teachers in rural areas have attained an undergraduate degree. In no small number, many who teach kindergarten or elementary school are only high school graduates.

The Indonesian government has indeed created a Recognition of Prior Learning scheme with a minimum of 2 years of work, but some universities stipulate 3 to 5 years of experience. This programme tends to be paradoxical because not all teachers have the same length of teaching experience. Moreover, not all teachers can teach or continue their studies due to the differing workloads of rural teachers.

Globalisation also poses a challenge for teachers. While urban teachers are already equipped with digital programme training such as learning artificial intelligence, some rural teachers certainly do not experience this.

Instead of learning digital skills, not a few of them even lack understanding in inputting digital data or sending and writing emails properly. Furthermore, due to inadequate internet infrastructure, teachers in the regions find it very difficult to participate in online interactions.

At a glance, these challenges must become a concern for Prabowo and his ministerial ranks. This means the president should reconsider that education is a very important sector for building Indonesia in the long term, rather than creating instant projects like Sekolah Garuda, or less beneficial programmes like the free nutritious meal initiative. Teachers are not only drivers of society but also strategic instruments in building civilisation.