Robert Go, Jakarta – Most wanted in Indonesia: More than half a million teachers willing to work long hours for little pay, no job security and little upward mobility.
The country's education crisis is approaching a climax as the government has to hire 542,000 more teachers within the next few years, says Mr Indra Djati Sidi, the Ministry of National Education's top official for elementary and secondary education.
The problem, however, is that Jakarta is broke and cannot afford more educators. "The teacher shortage occurs in all regions of the country, but the government has problems hiring new teachers because it has no money to pay for them," he said.
A potential solution, according to the government, is the use of contract teachers, who work for less money, are flexible in terms of job location and get no benefits.
Officials have said that nearly 370,000 such teachers would be hired next year alone, at a monthly salary of 200,000 rupiah, to help alleviate the problem.
Teachers would also be reassigned from region to region to ensure a more balanced coverage among state-run elementary and secondary schools.
But education professionals are not impressed by the ministry's plans. Their assessment is that hiring temporary workers is a stop-gap solution that does nothing to improve the quality of education received by Indonesian children.
Meanwhile, Jakarta continues to curtail spending in sectors where the effects of cuts will not show up now, but will appear in the social make-up of the country decades into the future. At stake, the experts say, will be Indonesia's regional and global competitiveness.
Mr Mohamad Surya, chairman of the Indonesian Teachers' Association (PGRI), said: "Failure to address the teacher crisis seriously within the next five years would deal an irreparable setback to the education system. We're talking about the future of millions of kids, the future of the country itself." Indonesia stopped hiring new, qualified teachers in 1999 at the height of its economic crisis. There are currently about 26 million elementary school students in the country.
About 1.4 million out of 2.2 million teachers work with the youngest age groups in elementary schools and earn an average of 1.5 million rupiah each month.
The Ministry of National Education's figures show that after 15 years on the job, the typical elementary school teacher takes home a measly 3 million rupiah.
At the same time, the average child here can expect to spend 9.6 years in school – less classroom time than a Malaysian's 12.1 years or an American's 16.8 years.
Educators from various regions also say that many of them teach subject matters that they are not trained to instruct, simply because someone has to shoulder the responsibility.
The World Bank and other donors to Indonesia have advised the government to focus more on education and other social sectors that could pose long-term problems.
But in the age of decentralisation, where regional politicians have more say in how money is spent by the government, teachers are getting the short end of the stick.
In the past year, teachers across the country have protested against the late distribution of salaries and, often, reduced pay resulting from the failure of regional governments to get their act together.
The biggest problem, however, remains the poor pay and low level of respect that educators get in society.
Mr Mohamad said: "Indonesians with a high level of education would normally not consider teaching as a career option because of the pay and the low social value of the profession. Of course, this has an impact on the quality of the teachers we have, and the education we give our children."