The New School Year in the Pandemic Era
The government has made the important decision to start the new school year in mid-July.
The New Student Acceptance Committee (PPDB) checks the file at SDN Manggarai 09, Tebet, South Jakarta, which applies the Covid-19 health protocol, on Wednesday (24/6/2020).
The government has made the important decision to start the new school year in mid-July.
However, this does not mean that the schools will be allowed to conduct face-to-face instruction throughout the country. The schools that will be able to do so are those in “green zones”, which account for only 6 percent (85 regencies/cities).
Organizing schooling in green zones is certainly not easy because the schools must prioritize the safety of students, teachers and education personnel. Therefore, school principals must ensure that safety is maintained.
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To carry out school activities in green zones, different budget allocations are needed because the schools must provide adequate means for washing hands with soap, arranging seats in the classroom in such a way so that physical distancing can be carried out, ensuring children are healthy by taking temperatures with infrared thermometers, providing masks for children who do not have them, and so on. Therefore it is important for principals to have good and effective leadership and be supported by teachers who can empower students.
Big data on education
What about the schools in the non-green zones? The schools in the yellow, orange and red zones are quite large in number. This is a formidable challenge for our education system and providers at the education unit level. Why is that so? Because most schools are in 94 percent of the non-green zone of the territory of the Republic of Indonesia. This means that our schools are scattered in 429 regencies/cities in Indonesian non-green areas.
Our education currently also has big data with classification: the number of schools is 220,098; 44,621,547 students; the teachers who currently have real teaching assignment amount to 2,720,778; 85,074 educational staff and 1,848,658 study groups (Dapodikdasmen, Even National Semester Recap 2019/2020, 24 June 2020). The big education data must be a basic consideration when the government adopts learning policies, both in the green and non-green zones.
If education policy in the new school year is taken without taking into account the impact on the big data of education, this will certainly be very detrimental to the preparation of the quality of Indonesia\'s human resources nationally to meet the golden Indonesia in 2045. Therefore, all policies related to education during the pandemic during the new school year, both regarding curriculum renewal, continuous improvement of teacher professionalism, online learning, and face-to-face learning, must all be based on accurate and valid facts and field data. Why is it so? Because whatever small any policy is, the impact will be extraordinary on the big data component of education.
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Therefore, educational policies in the new school year during the pandemic need to be carefully formulated in determining the agenda, policy formulation, policy adoption, implementation and evaluation. Without caution, there will be confusion and uncertainty among education stakeholders at the implementation level and the subject of a very large number of targets of the policy. A good and effective education policy in a pandemic like this must be able to solve problems faced by the big data component of education efficiently and effectively, be able to facilitate the schools, both private and public, to achieve learning objectives, both online and face-to-face, and also able to invite stakeholders to actively participate in implementing education policies while the pandemic is still happening.
Online learning
Online learning will be the main policy in most of our schools in the non-green zone in the new school year. Because it is the main policy, the government must recognize comprehensive policy challenges in terms of the elements involved in the learning process. If the capabilities of the elements involved are not properly mapped with various readiness and capacity, the name of online learning policy will only be a euphoria, far from reality and ideals.
Agda Baline Swarahati, a grade 4 student at Santo Antonius Elementary School from Padua, is working on exam questions from home in Nusa Loka, BSD City, South Tangerang, Banten, on Tuesday (9/6/2020).
In online learning, we must face many challenges. The main challenge is the problem of access and culture on the part of the students. Most students do not have the economic ability to access the internet. Especially in the 3T area, access is very difficult, if it cannot be said to be none at all. The government must immediately map our students\' internet access. Affirmation of the school operational costs (BOS) needs to be revived so that students who are economically unable to access the internet can be helped.
From the cultural aspect, students and teachers also have problems. Students and teachers cannot necessarily be asked to click on their laptops or smart phones, if they have, then online learning activities occur automatically and according to the principles of distance learning. Being told about learning platforms do not necessarily lead to interconnections among people, among programs and among machines as happened to the cultural characteristics of the people in the Industry 4.0 era. In short, this cultural aspect must also be taken into consideration by the online learning policy.
Furthermore, for effective online learning, parents must be able to learn to change, develop growth mindset in new normal of learning for their children.
There must be a process of increasing the capacity of teachers and students to recognize online culture so they can take advantage of the internet of things (IoT) that is currently very extensive. Furthermore, for effective online learning, parents must be able to learn to change, develop growth mindset in new normal of learning for their children. Parents should also be able to listen to their children when they face learning difficulties, can act as shadow teachers, can be a model for familiarization of characters which are feared to be ignored by online learning modalities.
Consequently, teachers and schools need to create reciprocal communication systems with students\' parents so that character building can occur coherently, not in contradiction with what teachers and schools formulate.
Suyanto, Professor at Yogyakarta State University; Director General of Primary and Secondary Education Management (Mandikdasmen) at the Education Ministry 2005-2013; Member of the National Education Standard Agency 2019-2023
