DECENTRALIZED BASIC EDUCATION

TOWARD A BETTER TEACHING PERFORMANCE

AND LEARNING ENVIRONMENT

An Indonesian Case

Arief S. Sadiman and Tarmi Pudjiastuti*)

Abstract

For more than five decades, the quality and equity of education has been a significant challenge for a country like Indonesian which covers a vast archipelago. The improvement of education quality at all levels, types and streams of education, therefore, has becomes one of the top priorities in the development of education system in the country. Among the factors contributing to the low quality of education is the insufficient number of highly qualified teachers, a non-conducive learning environment, and the lack of skilled personnel at both school and education offices in the areas of school planning and management. The current problems are now compounded by recent transition from a centralized to a decentralized government management system – including education - which was implemented in Indonesia beginning 2001.

To help improve the quality of basic education, USAID is working together with the Government of Indonesia in designing, developing, and implementing the Decentralized Basic Education (DBE) program in targeted provinces and districts from 2005 to 2010.

This paper will provide more information about the background, goal and purpose of the program, scope of work, expected outputs, target beneficiaries, components of the program, component 2 (DBE 2) which focuses on teaching and learning, strategy in implementing the program particularly in improving teaching performance and creating more conducive learning environment. Additionally, measures are being undertaken to ensure the sustainability of the program beyond the life of the project, and share lessons learned not only from this project but also from other previous and similar projects. Special attention will be given to potential contributions that DBE 2 can make to promote sustainable development, particularly in DBE 2 districts and provinces.

1). Context

The 1997 regional financial crisis has caused multidimensional crisis in Indonesia. Economic growth dropped substantially, which was less than 13.7% in 1998; budget for education decreased from 4.13% of the national budget to 2.74%; expenses for education increased sharply; purchasing power dropped significantly; and poor students vulnerable to drop-out. After almost ten year recovery, Indonesia is still the only crisis-hit country in Asia that has yet to regain its pre-1997 level of growth. Many of its economic problems have roots in the nation’s poor development of human resources: overall government investment in human capital is among the lowest in Southeast Asia.

Even though the amount of education budget has been prioritized to be the biggest of all development sectors from 2000-2004 (20 percent national budget should be allocated for education), but it was still 6.6% per year in the national budget.

Based on its Human Development Index, which measure comparatively poverty, literacy, education, life expectancy and childbirth, Indonesia falls into medium level country in rank 110 two points below Vietnam, while other neighboring countries are ranked 84 (Philippines), 73 (Thailand) and 61 (Malaysia). (UNDP, 2005). If we compare further its position among those countries back to 10 years ago the picture also does not look good.

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*) USAID – Indonesia

Vietnam and Philippines made a significant progress compare to Indonesia (See the table in Appendix 1).

The problems are compounded by recent transition from a centralized to a decentralized government management system – including education - which was implemented in Indonesia beginning 2001. Decentralization has started off well, but the process takes time. Through this autonomous and decentralization authority, the national education system is required to adjust itself, do necessary changes, adaptations, and innovations to facilitate the implementation of education process which is autonomous, democratic, enhancing diversity and encouraging the community participation.

Local governments are now responsible for managing and delivering public services, including education. The only authorities left in the central government in education are those related to setting national policies for standard of competencies, national curriculum, evaluation calendar and evaluation. A more operational and technical arrangements in educational implementation belong to the district or municipal government. However, decentralization thus far has done little to improve the administration of these services. The challenge is to build local capacity to provide better quality basic education.

Looking at the statistical data , Indonesia has 70 million children between the ages of 0-14 who constitute nearly 30% of the population, but millions of these youth enter the Indonesian job market each year without the basic education and skills necessary to compete in a modern economy.

In year 2002/2003 there were about 2.6 million teachers from pre-school to high school level, public and private. With this number, 427,903 additional teachers were still needed. The insufficient number of teachers became bigger due to a significant number of teachers were almost reaching retirement age. At Primary School level itself there was still 107,461 teachers shortage during 2004-2005 (See Table on Teachers Shortage at Appendix 2).

Problem of teacher is not only happen in the number but also its quality. Data from Research and Development Office of Ministry of National Education in 2004 showed high percentage of incompetent teachers. At Primary School level, 49% teachers was incompetent, while at Junior Secondary School, Senior Secondary Sschool and Vocational School, the percentage respectively was 36%, 33% and 43% (PDIP, Balitbang, 2003). Teacher and Lecture Law No 14/2005 states that teachers must have academic qualifications which are acquired through higher education in a bachelor degree (S1) or four-year diploma program (D4). With that regulation actually less than 10 % primary school teachers are qualified as they possess Bachelor degree above (Jalal, 2006).

The education infrastructure and facilities showed shorts in many aspects and levels. Only 42 % out of 865,258 clsssrooms at Primary School are in good condition. In terms of library, only 28% Primary Schools had library and with unequal distribution. District/Municipal governments allocated more on teachers’ salary in the education sector while the allocation for educational operating cost only reached 5-10%. This, in turn, has resulted in very small amount for teaching materials and equipment, teaching learning process, staff development, and cost for maintenance of education infrastructure and facilities, which did not support the efforts for quality improvement.

Director General of Teacher and Educational Personal Quality Improvement reported that teaching-learning process in the classroom emphasizes too much on theory mastery and cognition. The load of learning which was too structured and overloaded has caused the learning processes at school was isolated from social and physical conditions and changes. This condition has made learning processes routine, uninteresting, and unable to enhance creativity of students, teachers and school principals in developing innovative learning approaches. The low quality of education was shown by almost all levels and types of education and this may lead to low education efficiency, high class repeaters and drop-outs. (Jalal, 2005). He further said that supervision function was weak at all levels of education. The school principals as school managers did not supervise their own schools as expected. The weaknesses of education planning, learning processes, and its evaluation was not monitored effectively by the supervisors so that the weaknesses in the learning processes was not accurately identified.

With the condition briefly descibed above it does make sense that the Government of Indonesia puts equity and equality of national education and quality education, as two of its four priority missions beside acquiring an efficient, productive, accountable, and democratic management education system through implementation of good governance principles stressing on education decentralization and autonomy.

The continuous improvement of quality education has been done by the government through a central management which further deconcentrated to Governors or related officials in the province, and further down to the districts/municapalities.

Fiveteen programs are already planned to implement the policies, classified into the main programs (Early Chilhood Education Programme, Nine Year Compulsory Basic Education Programme, Secondary Education Programme, Higher Education Programme, Non-Formal Education Programme, Improvement of Teachers and Education Personnel Programme, Management of Service Programme, and Policy Reserach Development Programme, and Programme for Research and Development of Science and Technology) and support programs (Improvement of Supervision and Accountability of Government Officials, Development of Reading Culture and Library Supervision, Strengthening the Students, Teachers and Parents Relationship, Management of Human Resource, Improvement of Infrastructure and Facilities, and Nation and Government Leaders Management. (Jalal, 2005).

Realizing that it is imposible to rely only on conventional management and service delivery system in providing good quality and equal education opportunity to all citizens living spread throughout the archipelago consisting of over 17,000 islands, the government has therefore decided to mainstream information and communication technology (ICT) in the education development programs for both management and service delivery.

2). Decentralized Basic Education - DBE

In August 30, 2004 the Governments of Indonesia and United States of America signed an agreement (Strategic Objective Agreement number 497-018) to improve quality of Basic Education in Indonesia. Decentralized Basic Education (DBE), name of the program, is a five years project (2005-2010), implemented through the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and coordinated by the coordinating Ministry for People’s Welfare Republic Indonesia, responds directly to the government of Indonesia’s priorities and reflects the joint Indonesia-US commitment to revitalize education for the next generation of Indonesia’s leaders.

Currently 28 local governments in seven provinces (East Java, Central Java, West Java,

Banten, Nanggroe Aceh Darussalam, North Sumatera, and South Sulawesi), and Special Territory of Jakarta and more than 542 schools (Primary School and Madrasah

Ibtidaiyah/MI) are participating in the program. It is planned that by 2008 the program will expand to 100 districts to provide a benefit to more than 400,000 primary school students and around 14,000 teachers. (DBE Scope of work please see Appendix 3)

3). Goal and Objectives

The goal of DBE is to improve quality of basic education in Indonesia through the following interrelating components:

  1. Improving the quality of education through better management and governance of schools (DBE 1);
  2. Improving the quality of teaching and learning practices (DBE 2); and
  3. Improving the relevant work and life skills education for youth (DBE 3).

In building local management and governance DBE 1 conducts major activities such as:

o  Improving capacity of districts to effectively manage basic education (developing multi-source, multi-year school development plans, district capacity assessment, etc);

o  Strengthening education governance at each level, from parents to school committee to Board of Education and to DPRD;

o  Increasing use of information resources to enhance education management and governance; and

o  Disseminating of DBE outcomes, through replication of best practices and the development of public-private alliances.

At the school level, DBE 1 is developing school committee capacity to prepare and implement school development plans, monitor school performance, promote transparency in school management and increase community participation.

Focus of DBE 3 is improving life skills education for both formal and non formal students. Partnering with various parties such as Junior Secondary Schools, NGOs, Community Learning Centers, local and national government, DBE 3 to build a more supportive environment to improve and sustain the quality of youth education; ensure junior secondary schools are able to provide more opportunities for youth to develop life skills across the school experience; and prepare out-of-school youth for life-long learning, entrance into the workforce and participation in community development through building the capacity of non-formal education providers.

DBE 2, which will be described in more detail in this paper, is dealing with the improvement of teaching and learning quality in basic education through strengthening teacher training and improving the school learning environment.

The three components (DBE 1,2 and 3) work together in developing a better quality of basic education for future generation as seen in the following diagram. There are three overlapping areas where the three DBE components try developing and promoting: school based management, curriculum and community participation.

Components of DBE

4). Decentralized Basic Education 2

As a second component of the program DBE 2 focuses on improving quality of teaching and learning in primary education. Building upon successful aspects of recent initiatives in Indonesia, it is expected that after the DBE 2 program intervention we will get better teacher performance as a result of decentralized in-service teacher training, and better student and school performance as a result of improved learning environment.

5). Program Activities

To improve quality of teaching and learning and create a better learning environment, DBE 2 conducts the following activities:

a)  Training

b)  University Partnership

c)  Use of ICT

d)  Cluster Resource Center

e)  Improvement of Kindergarten; and

f)  Public Private Alliances

a). Training.

As the core activity DBE 2 training is a comprehensive in-service teacher training program, built at the school and cluster level, emphasizing the development of “communities of practice” among groups of teachers who work together to learn, process, practice, reflect upon, and improve new classroom approaches.

Our targets are improved capacity of at least 14,000 primary school teachers, both at regular (primary school/ SD) and religious based schools (Madrasah Ibtidaiyah/ MI) to be a better teacher, and a decentralized teacher training system that will grow and be locally sustained created. The better teachers who already got DBE 2 training should demonstrate:

-  knowledge of the relevant subject matter;

-  ability to use a range of active-learning pedagogies appropriate for the content;

-  competence in the language of instruction and good communication skills;

-  ability to create and sustain an energetic learning environment based on the use of active learning, student-centered approaches, and the use of higher-order thinking skills;

-  recognition of and response to the needs and interests of their students and communities;

-  ability to reflect on teaching and students’ responses and change the learning environment accordingly; and

-  development of a strong sense of ethics and professionalism and commitment to teaching.

To accomplish both outcomes, our training reflects what teachers want, what universities can supply, and what the local economy will pay for in the long run. A meaningful partnership between district educational officials and other stakeholders was established. These officials must be prepared to use their own educational budgets for teacher training by drawing upon the services and products of nearby universities to deliver training at the cluster and school level, through their own courses, or both. Since universities are actively involved starting from the beginning in designing and developing the training packages and delivery, testing their relevance at the cluster and school level they must feel a sense of ownership of the training methods and materials. We realize that even where good training methods and materials already exist, the process of building ownership and demand is fundamental for the success and sustainability of decentralized teacher training in Indonesia