Education Minister Bambang Sudibyo admitted Monday that irregularities occurred in the disbursement of this year's operational support fund for schools due to poor student registration and monitoring systems in some regions.

During a hearing Monday with House Commission X on education and health, Bambang said that the Development Finance Comptroller (BPKP) had found cases in which the numbers of students were inflated, or funds went to nonexistent schools or school development programs, in all of the 33 provinces.

"We will improve the supervision systems in the future," he said as quoted by detik.com news portal, adding that he would punish or dismiss principals and education officials involved in irregularities.

Long before the BPKP findings, House members and nongovernmental organizations reported irregularities and alleged corruption in the distribution of the funds. Some of the reports said principals used a portion of the funding to bribe local education officials to file good reports about them, rather than for school programs.

Bambang said the alleged irregularities served as a lesson for the government and schools in distributing the funds in the first years of the program.

"This is a huge country. We need to learn the process better," he said. "Principals are still learning how to manage their own school budgets." Bambang reported to the House that of the Rp 10.3 trillion (US$1.1 billion) earmarked for the school support funds, about 71 percent was already spent.