Indonesia Portal Blog

Author: M. Tohirin Hasan,
Translation: Marc Koeberlein

Introduction

Education is very important, especially for indonesia. As an emerging nation, indonesia needs education to get out of state of underdevelopment.

With a good education, the upcoming generations can help to push the progress of development of their country by taking an active part in this progress.

Since 1945, when indonesia became independet, the country tries to build up its educational system and knows how important it is. Of course, the system is still backwarded, compared to other western or asian countries, but very slowly it will be improved.

Stages of indonesias educational system

1. the pre school - children from 1 to 4 years

2. the kindergarten (TK = taman kanak kanak) - 4 to 6 years

3. public primary school (SD = Sekolah Dasar ) or muslm primary school (MI = Madrasah Ibtidaiyah) - 6 to 12 years

4. public grammar school (SMP = Sekolah Menengah Pertama ) or muslim grammar school (MTS = Madrasah Tsanawiyah) - 12 to 15 years

5. public high school (SMA = Sekolah Menengah Atas) or muslim high school (MA = Madrasah Aliyah) - 15 to 18 years

6. college or university (ST = Sekolah Tinggi or Universitas)

The possible degrees are D1, D2, D3, D4 as well as S1 (Bachelor), S2 (Master of Arts) and S3 (Doctor).

An oddity of indonesias education system ist, that students can end their already after 1, 2, 3 or 4 years. This degrees are called “Diploma (D1, D2, D3, D4)”.

Of course this degrees are low of value and even graduates with a bachelor degree have difficulties to find an adequate job after finishing the College.

Indonesian Students

Different types of proprietary education in indonesia

Beside the formal education (primary school, grammer school etc.) the educational law of indonesia aids the nonformal eduction (pre-school, kindergarten) and informal education (courses, study groups etc).

The problems of indonesias education system

The indonesian gouverment invested a lot in education in the past years and did accomplish the following goals:

1. Formely, indonesia had an central based education system, wich provided the same curricula for every region and tried to reach the same quality in all regions.

Since a while, the system was decentralised.Every region is now eligible to regulate its curriculum by itself. The department of education just tries to reach similair standards in all regions.

2. The curricula got improved. The former curricula just concerned with theoretical lessons. The improved curricula is focussing a bit more on practice and the participation of students to improve the curriculum.

3. The salaries of teachers, but also the demands on the teaching staff were increased.

A little while ago teachers didn´t need a teaching certificate. Everyone could be a tutor on schools and universities. Of course the quality of education was mostly worse. Sometimes students even were teached wrong in many areas.

Since 2003 teaching certificates are an obligation to get an accreditation to teach at schools and universities. It helped a lot to improve the quality of the tuition.

Despite this improvement, there are still many problems in indonesias education system. A few will be mentioned in the following text.

Problems in primary school

The primary school is still very problematic, because many children between 7 and 15, never visited a school. Also the amount of dropouts is very high.

Furthermore yearly, about more than 500.000 primary school students couldn´t reach the qualification for grammar school, beacause of their lack of education.

This is mostly caused by underfinanced schools. The teaching material is mostly outdated or not even available also the teachers are underpayed.

The origin of this problem was amongst others, the late introduction of compulsory education. The compulsory education (9 years) exists not until 1994.

The gouverment wanted to complete this program till 2003, but they failed, because of many problems that impended the process. Mostly beacuse of lack of fundings.

The new primary goals of the ministry of education till 2008 are:

1. 95 % of all students, especially female students and children of poor families, should be able to reach the qualification for grammar school.

2. male and female students should get the same chances in all kind of schools.

3. The instruction of teachers and the provided teaching material should be improved.

If this goals can be reached is depending on the alloted funds.

Problems in tertiary education

The tertiary education is playing a decisive role in the developing progress of indonesia. For one thing to modernize the country, for another thing to build up indonesia human capital.

The amount of tertiary aspirants is rising, every year and also the amount of graduates. In the year 2005, 2,9 million students, on 80 state and 1700 private universities, completed their degree.

These are 12 % of the total population. until 2020 this rate will raise to 25 % or 6,2 million (Fadjar, 2005).

The problem here is still the quality of education. Many degree holders with a bachelor aren´t able to find a adequate job.

This is caused for one thing, because the indonesian degrees can´t compete against the international degrees. For another thing, the reconciliation between industry and universities isn´t perfect.

Sources:

Fadjar, A. Malik. 2005. Holistika Pemikiran Pendidikan. Jakarta: Rajawali Press.

Departemen Pendidikan Nasional. 2006. Program Gerakan Nasional Percepatan Penuntasan Wajib Belajar Sembilan tahun. Jakarta: Depdiknas

UU Republik Indonesia No.20 Tahun 2003 Tentang Sistem Pendidikan Nasional. Surabaya: Penerbit Karina

UU Republik Indonesia No. 14 Tahun 2005 Tentang Guru dan Dosen. Jakarta: Sinar Grafika

>Author:

M. Tohirin Hasan adalah Dosen Luar Biasa Jurusan Teknologi Pendidikan Universitas Negeri Malang; Direktur Ekskutif Center for Education and Social Studies (CESS), Malang

Alamat: Jl. Candi 2A No. 383 Karangbesuki, Sukun, Malang,
Jawa Timur, Indonesia

Email: tohirinhasan (at) yahoo.com,
he_riends (at) yahoo.com

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This entry was posted on Thursday, June 21st, 2007 at 6:51 pm and is filed under Education. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.