Dessy Sagita, Jakarta – Educators have lambasted Indonesia's two vice presidential candidates for pandering to the masses following their televised debate on Sunday in which they expounded on their education policies.
Both Hatta Rajasa, who is running with Prabowo Subianto, and Jusuf Kalla, the running mate to Joko Widodo, agreed on the need for increased education spending to build a more competent workforce to boost Indonesia's global competitiveness – but experts said this oversimplified what was in reality a far more complex set of problems.
"When the candidates present their platforms, especially during a debate, they will of course tend to tout popular policies for the sake of looking good," Muhammad Abduhzen, the executive director of the Education Reform Center at Jakarta's Paramadina University, told the Jakarta Globe on Monday.
During Sunday's debate, which centered on human resources and science and technology, Hatta emphasized the importance of improving the education system, and proposed increasing the number of teachers nationwide by 800,000 over the next five years.
"With a sufficient number of teachers, everyone will get a decent education and the quality of our human resources as well as technology and research will improve," Hatta said.
He also promised to increase their certification allowance – a bonus for teachers who pursue higher qualifications – to Rp 4 million ($334) a month.
But the plan, says Retno Listyarti, secretary general of the Federation of Indonesian Teachers Associations (FSGI), "is unrealistic". "The plan will put a huge dent in our education budget," she told the Globe.
She pointed out that under the law, the certification allowance cannot be higher than a teacher's basic salary, which is typically much less than Rp 4 million a month.
"If their salary is less than Rp 4 million the government will have to increase their basic salary first, then add the allowance, and this additional expense will have to be taken from the state budget," Retno said.
Indonesia currently allocates 20 percent of the state budget to education, the bulk of which already goes toward teachers' salaries, Retno said. "Increasing the teachers' salaries will mean other education programs will lose their funding," she said.
She also took issue with Hatta's call to increase the number of teachers, arguing that there were already enough teachers, but that their distribution across the country was far from ideal, with Java home to three out of every four teachers.
"According to a World Bank report, each teacher teaches on average almost 20 students, but this ratio is so much better compared to some other countries where one teacher must teach up to 50 students," Retno said, adding that the government must provide additional incentives to get teachers to serve in remote areas.
The teachers aren't just poorly distributed – many are simply unqualified to teach, says Jumono, a member of the Alliance of Concerned Parents for Education (APPI).
"The vice presidential candidates should know that during the competency test conducted for teachers some time ago, many teachers performed very poorly," he told the Globe. "Despite the massive funding for the teacher certification allowance, many of our teachers are not getting any better as educators."
Jumono said many teachers still used outdated teaching methods that were no longer suited to today's curriculum. "If our children are smart nowadays it's not because they're learning in the classroom; they're learning from the internet and form the extracurricular classes they take outside school," he said.
Jumono said the presidential and vice presidential candidates should focus on building teacher capacity. "It should start with better recruitment, involve the professionals such as education experts and psychologists in recruiting teachers," he said.
He added that to achieve a more competent workforce, Indonesia needed teachers who could challenge students' intelligence by running interactive classes where students and teachers could engage more closely.
Retno said the Indonesian teachers were in dire need of training. "Increasing their allowances won't automatically improve the teachers' quality as long as they still lack training," she said.
She cited a 2012 FSGI survey that found that 62 percent of Indonesian elementary school teachers had never undergone training.
"In Singapore they give their teachers 100 hours of training every year – that's how they achieve a high quality of education," Retno said. "In Indonesia, even in the big cities, most teachers have less than half that amount of training hours."
Source: http://www.thejakartaglobe.com/news/indonesian-vps-score-f-education/