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Educating Indonesia
101 East investigates why Indonesia's education system is one of the
worst in the world.
101 East Last Modified: 22 Feb 2013 08:45
Participants in Indonesia Mengajar, a programme funded by private
corporations and run by prominent university educator Anies Baswedan, are given
army survival training before being deployed. But they are not soldiers; they
are educated professionals sent to remote corners of the archipelago to teach
as volunteers in some of Indonesia's most impoverished schools.
The volunteer teachers must deal with one of the worst education systems
in the world. Indonesia recently ranked last in a landmark education report
that measured literacy, test results, graduation rates and other key benchmarks
in 50 nations. Only a third of Indonesian students - in a country where 57
million attend school - complete basic schooling and the education system is
plagued by poor teaching and corruption.
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Indonesian educators and commentators have slammed the country's school
system for placing more emphasis on rote learning than creative thinking. A
culture of teaching anchored in obedience as well as a rigid approach to
religious studies and assigned reading have been described as major problems.
Education experts say less than half of the country's teachers possess
even the minimum qualifications to teach properly and teacher absenteeism
hovers at around 20 percent. Many teachers in the public school system work
outside of the classroom to improve their incomes.
Only 51 percent of Indonesian teachers have the right
qualifications to teach [Al Jazeera/Karima Anjani]
Corruption is also rife within schools and universities - with parents
often having to pay bribes for their children to pass examinations or pay for
services that should be provided by the state.
Indonesian Corruption Watch claims there are very few schools in the
country that are clean of graft, bribery or embezzlement - with 40 percent of
their budget siphoned off before it reaches the classroom.
Meanwhile, millions of dollars in foreign aid is poured into the
country's education system despite the government spending only a very small
proportion of its GDP on schooling. And some international observers are asking
why Indonesia still relies on external funding for school construction given
that it has been listed as a middle income country by the World Bank.
Responding to its critics, the Indonesian government is introducing a new
curriculum in an effort to simplify education, slash drop-out rates and produce
more PhDs. One of the government's most controversial proposals has been to
abolish or postpone the teaching of science, geography and English in
elementary schools and to instead introduce compulsory subjects that promote
national identity and patriotic values.
Many educators are concerned that this could push Indonesia back to the
Stone Age in a rapidly globalising world. They argue that a child's early years
are the time to provide them with a more formative education using critical
thinking, especially considering the high drop-out rates after primary school.
But the government has defended the changes to the curriculum by arguing
that they are trying to simplify a school system that has been criticised for
overwhelming elementary students with too many subjects.
101 East investigates the world's fourth largest education system and
asks what can be done to improve schooling in one of the fastest-growing
economies where a third of the population is school-aged.
101 East airs each week at the following times GMT: Thursday: 2230;
Friday: 0930; Saturday: 0330; Sunday: 1630.
Click here for more 101 East
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