Education Red Report Card

Truly worrying. Over the last several years there have been very dangerous signs for the future of the country\'s civilization, namely conflicting tendencies in the management of national education.

KOMPAS/ABDULLAH FIKRI ASHRI

The principal of SD Paoman IV state elementary school, Lutfiya (third left) and her students read books about mangroves at their school in Indramayu regency, West Java, Saturday (25/5/2019). SD Paoman IV is one of the 26 elementary schools in Indramayu running the environmental education course on mangroves. The target is that 42 elementary schools apply the course this year.

First is the paradox of the tendency for an increasingly large education budget on the one hand and the declining quality of our education on the other hand. For example, in the 2018 state budget, the education budget allocation reached Rp 444 trillion and in 2020 this figure increased to Rp 508 trillion. On the other hand, Indonesia\'s PISA ranking dropped from 65th place (2015) to 72th (2018) among 77 countries because the Indonesian children\'s reading, math and science ability scores continued to decline.

The World Bank reported that the quality of education in Indonesia was still the lowest in the scope of ASEAN. Fifty-five percent of children aged 15 years were functionally illiterate, compared to Vietnam, which is less than 10 percent (CNN, 7/6/2018). Based on the global league table published by the education firm Pearson (2012), Indonesia\'s education system is rated the worst in the world, and the best are Finland and South Korea.

Also read : Learning from PISA

Second, the paradox of the teacher certification budget continues to increase but the impact on improving the quality of national education has not yet been seen. In the 2017 state budget, for example, the budget reached Rp 75.2 trillion, and in the following year it rose to Rp 79.6 trillion. However, the World Bank\'s publication, Spending More or Spending Better: Improving Education Financing in Indonesia (2013), shows that there has been no impact in the teacher certification program on improving the quality of education. What has changed is the improvement in the welfare of teachers, which is marked by a dramatic decrease in the number of teachers having side jobs from 33 percent before certification to 7 percent after certification (page 73).

Third is the paradox of recruiting around 100,000 teachers each year, but the number of teachers has been in surplus by the international standard. With around 50 million students in primary and secondary education with 4 million teachers [Education and Culture Ministry 20/12/2019], it means that each teacher only teaches 12-13 students. Meanwhile, the average international ratio is 20-21 students per teacher. Japan has a ratio of 27-28 students per teacher (UNESCO 2017). By using the international standard, Indonesia seems to have an excess of around 1.6 million teachers.

Kompas

Some rooms at the Teacher Training University (STKIP) Ar-Rahmaniyah in Citayam, Depok, West Java as seen on Thursday (8/3). The university offers education from kindergarten up to university.

Save the national education

These very dangerous tendencies remind me of the analogy of Charles Handy in his book, The Age of Unreason (1995), which tells the story of frogs that are put in normal-temperature pots. The fire was lit and the pan was heated. At first, the frogs were not disturbed, they seemed quite satisfied and apparently their new environment was quite pleasant for them. Gradually when the temperature rises to near the boiling point, the frogs grow increasingly uneasy but when the water reaches its boiling point, the frogs are also boiled.

There is no shortcut to immediately get out of the backwardness of our education today. However, it seems, the main problem revolves around these two main points.

Also read : PISA and Our Human Resource’s Capacity

First is that education standardization with all its aspects is not truly enforced. As an illustration, some time ago, I visited an elementary school in West Bandung. The school had 60 students, mostly girls. The area of the school building and yard looked no more than 200 square meters. Class 1 and class 2 student learning rooms were only insulated by plywood walls, narrow, and if they got lessons together, the situation would be disrupted. For class 3 and class 4, the place was in the living room of the principal\'s house which was only about 30 meters from the school with a learning situation liked grades 1 and 2. The classrooms of class 5 and 6 were not yet available because the school was only four years old. In this school no teacher room and library were available, there was even no adequate yard that allowed children to play.

The situation of the school that I observed reminded me of the data submitted by Education and Culture Minister Mohammad Nuh (2012) that 88.8 percent of schools in Indonesia, ranging from elementary to high school/vocational school, had not passed the minimum service quality standards, 10.15 percent had fulfilling, and only 0.65 percent of schools are rated to have the international standards.

Just for comparison, even though Singapore is a very small country, the situation of the schools generally has a large yard, standard buildings, complete with a soccer field or basketball court. Window classrooms are large and are designed so that they face the field or garden. In front of the classroom, the corridor is also wide, there is a park for science lessons, a multimedia room, a computer, a doctor\'s room, a psychologist, a library, a canteen, and a meeting hall. In each class there are lockers for each child, so textbooks can be stored there if they don\'t want them to be brought home.

The situation at the tertiary level of education seems also not much different from the situation at the level of primary and secondary education. Of the 4,715 tertiary institutions throughout the country, only 96 were accredited with A [Research, Technology and Higher Education Ministry (Kemristekdikti), 2019]. As an illustration, there is a university in the Menteng area, Jakarta, where the building is narrow, only two shophouses which are combined, the surrounding is crowded with street vendors. When stopping by this campus, I only met one employee who handled all campus matters. It turns out that this university only accommodates night class students who just come from work. This university seems not to meet the quality-oriented standards.

This is where the urgency of the presence of the Education and Culture Ministry leaders to immediately foster and discipline these schools to meet the standards. Whatever good any policy which has been and will be announced by Minister Nadiem, if it does not fix all standards (graduate competencies, content, processes, education staff, facilities and infrastructure, management, financing, and assessment) that are needed, it will be difficult to expect optimal results. How is it possible for children to enjoy the situation of "Freedom Learning" and "Freedom Campus" in line with the minister\'s expectations if the learning environment is far below the minimum requirements.

Education and practical politics

Second, over the last decade there has been a shift in the direction of overall education management policies, from professional technical approaches to the interests of practical politics, image building, and testing. The most obvious situation occurs at the provincial, regency/city, districts, up to the school level as the lowest educational bureaucracy unit. Even, it seems that education affairs have been reduced by elites at the central and regional levels to become "a matter of receipt". With regional autonomy, the elected regents/mayors are free to place close people who have been credited for their victory in the elections to fill all education posts. There are regions that promote someone who takes care of market affairs to the affairs of education, some other are from funeral affairs to the education office.

KOMPAS/AGUS SUSANTO

Fourth, fifth and sixth-graders study in the same classroom at the SD 12 state elementary school in Tajung Durian, North Putussibau district, Kapuas Hulu regency, West Kalimantan, on Friday (26/3/2018). Indonesia’s rising per-capita income is not followed by improvements in the quality of education. Indonesia’s educational achievements, especially at elementary and junior high school levels, remain below average.

Hopefully, in the near future, the state will truly be present to educate the nation\'s life by truly liberating the world of education from the practical political game by seriously directing all educational policies to raise educational standards for the safety of our future together.

Hafid Abbas, Professor at School of Education Science, Jakarta State University; Visiting Professor at Tsai Lecture Series, Harvard University, 2006.