Desy Nurhayati, Jakarta – Experts, activists and teachers said they would consider filing a request for the Constitutional Court to revoke its recent decision ordering the inclusion of teachers' salaries into the education budget.
Teachers' salaries have to-date been allocated via civil servant expenditures rather than the education budget.
The Constitutional Court revised Article 49 of the 2003 law on education last month, and has ordered the government to pay teachers' salaries from the education budget.
The ruling was in response to a judicial review request submitted by two teachers from South Sulawesi.
The plaintiffs said the inclusion of their salaries in the education budget, which sees an overall increase every year, would also increase their wages.
But critics said the new ruling would further debilitate efforts to improve education in Indonesia because the budget should only be spent on facilities to directly benefit students.
Indonesian Teachers Association chairman M. Surya told The Jakarta Post teachers were angry about the Constitutional Court's decision.
"This is a setback for the national education sector," Surya said. "Teachers will not be able to enjoy better welfare and at the same time the government will not be able to provide better education services."
Surya said the association supported any plan to seek a judicial review of the ruling. He said the association had also written to the government and the House of Representatives to express its disappointment over the court's decision.
Education expert Soedijarto said the salaries should continue to be pulled from civil servant expenditures and not the education budget.
"The decision will merely help the government achieve the constitutional requirement of 20 percent of the state budget for education," Soedijarto said. "But, in fact, it will slash other portions the government should spend to improve educational facilities."
A legal expert from Yogyakarta's Gadjah Mada University, Zainal Arifin Mochtar Husein, said it was necessary to ask the Constitutional Court to annul Article 49.
"With its annulment, there will only be Article 31 in the law on education that requires 20 percent of the state budget for education," he said.
Zainal said the judicial review request by the plaintiffs was "weird". "It runs counter with the mainstream thought of teachers and also with the government's policy to never incorporate teachers' pay into the education budget," he said.
"In fact, the allocation will have reached 20.1 percent next year even without including the teachers' salaries in the education budget."
This year's education budget of Rp 64.029 trillion accounted for 17.4 percent of the government's total spending of Rp 854.66 trillion. The figure has gradually increased by some 2.7 percent on average over the last few years.
Support for a plan to challenge the court ruling also came from Yuna Farhan of the Indonesian Forum for Budget Transparency. He said the Constitutional Court should have better calculated the issue first, before making its decision.
The two plaintiffs were identified as teacher Rahmatiah Abbas and lecturer Badriyah Rifai, who is head of a postgraduate program in South Sulawesi.
But Surya said the teachers' association heard from its representatives from South Sulawesi the plaintiffs were not teachers. "We are collecting evidence to prove whether they are teachers or not."
Activists said if the plaintiffs were found to be non-teachers, the court's decision would be legally be flawed.