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JAKARTA POST, 01 Mei 2013
When I returned from Italy after my parents completed their
diplomatic posting in 1971, I enrolled at what was supposedly the best school
in East Jakarta. In Rome, I had attended Marymount International High School
and had received not only an excellent education but a foundation for life: it
was there I learned how to think.
I went with my mother for an interview with my new Jakarta headmaster. After examining my documents, he decided I would be admitted to the first year of SMA (senior high school), a year lower than at Marymount.
I was indignant. In Rome, I had been allowed to skip two years and enter grade 9 instead of 7, my school grade when I left Jakarta. When I told the headmaster about this, his reply was, “Oh, most schools abroad are only better at mathematics, nothing else”. Much to the consternation of my mother, I retorted, “If our education system is so great, then why is our country in such a mess?” There was no answer.
More than 40 years later, Indonesia is still a mess — certainly as far as its education system is concerned. The incompetence, possible corruption and lack of transparency behind the recent national exam fiasco seems to mirror the reality of governance and politics in Indonesia in general (see “Calls mount for education and culture minister to resign”, The Jakarta Post, April 29).
In February this year, Aljazeera’s weekly report “East 101” looked at why Indonesia’s education system is, as it claimed, “one of the worst in the world”. The program cited a landmark education report that measured literacy, test results, graduation rates and other key benchmarks in 50 nations. Indonesia ranked last.
So what’s wrong with Indonesia’s education system? Sadly, just about everything. Here’s the list (and, believe it or not, folks, it’s not exhaustive!):
The majority of teachers — especially in elementary school — are neither properly qualified nor trained and “upgraded” on a regular basis. The student-teacher ratio is one of the lowest in the world. The curriculum is poorly thought out, even illogical. One depressing example is the recent plan to drop science, social studies and reduce English instruction, replacing them with “character building” subjects like Islamic studies and local culture. There are also too many subjects taught, and they are spread too thinly, over-burdening students.
In fact, the curriculum in general is not geared to “learning for the future”, as a good education must be. The exam and evaluation system also needs much improvement. It’s currently aimed more at simply “passing” the student rather than making him or her understand what is being taught. And, of course, there is a serious lack of professionalism among the regional education officers and school staff, including headmasters and school administrators.
While the education budget is high enough — approximately Rp 70 trillion (US$7.2 billion) allocated for the central level and Rp 200 trillion for the regions — it is not properly allocated. Partly as a result, infrastructure is very bad: of about 900,000 elementary school classrooms throughout the country, only 42 percent are in good shape, 35 percent are in disrepair and almost 25 percent are heavily damaged. Books are likewise often incomplete, and many schools don’t have laboratories or even libraries. Some even lack roofs or walls!
Wow! This is equivalent to a train-wreck in a country where school-age children number 58 million. And children are supposed to be our future? The way things are going, are we slowly but surely flushing our future down the toilet?
Then I read about the PISA tests.
No, nothing to do with that leaning tower in Italy. PISA stands for the Program for International Student Assessment of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and it has become the leading international benchmark for education.
Andreas Schleicher, the head of PISA — a tall, slender, flinty-eyed, snow-haired German statistician — designed a test administered to hundreds of thousands of 15 year-olds around the world that gives “unprecedented insight into how well national education systems are preparing their students for adult life…[and]… their readiness for ‘knowledge worker’ jobs — their ability to think critically and solve real-world problems”.
In a fascinating and inspiring TED talk, Schleicher said that the story of PISA is “a story of how international comparisons have globalized the field of education that we usually treat as an affair of domestic policy”.
The latest PISA results (in 2010) were a “Shanghai surprise”: the largest city of the People’s Republic of China came out with top scores. Shanghai students, including migrant students, were highest in every aspect (math, reading and science).
When it comes to countries, however, Finland and South Korea rank number one and two on the PISA scale. According to Schleicher, South Korea shows what’s possible. Two generations ago, its standard of living was the same as Afghanistan today, one of the lowest education performers. Today, every Korean finishes high school. By contrast, the US — No. 1 in the 1960s — now ranks 17th.
One of Schleicher’s several encouraging findings is that “we no longer live in a world that is neatly divided between rich and well-educated countries and poor and badly-educated ones”. Luxembourg for example, spends as much per student as Korea but ranks only in the 20s. He also says that there are several countries that combine excellence with equity, which is good news for poor village children worldwide — including in Indonesia!
Schleicher’s conclusion: “In a global economy, it is no longer national improvement that’s the benchmark for success, but the best performing education systems internationally”.
And that’s big question: Can Indonesia reinvent its school system and do a Korea before it’s too late? Maybe not, but even a Luxembourg wouldn’t be bad outcome, given where PISA puts us now — a sad number 58 (out of 66). ●
I went with my mother for an interview with my new Jakarta headmaster. After examining my documents, he decided I would be admitted to the first year of SMA (senior high school), a year lower than at Marymount.
I was indignant. In Rome, I had been allowed to skip two years and enter grade 9 instead of 7, my school grade when I left Jakarta. When I told the headmaster about this, his reply was, “Oh, most schools abroad are only better at mathematics, nothing else”. Much to the consternation of my mother, I retorted, “If our education system is so great, then why is our country in such a mess?” There was no answer.
More than 40 years later, Indonesia is still a mess — certainly as far as its education system is concerned. The incompetence, possible corruption and lack of transparency behind the recent national exam fiasco seems to mirror the reality of governance and politics in Indonesia in general (see “Calls mount for education and culture minister to resign”, The Jakarta Post, April 29).
In February this year, Aljazeera’s weekly report “East 101” looked at why Indonesia’s education system is, as it claimed, “one of the worst in the world”. The program cited a landmark education report that measured literacy, test results, graduation rates and other key benchmarks in 50 nations. Indonesia ranked last.
So what’s wrong with Indonesia’s education system? Sadly, just about everything. Here’s the list (and, believe it or not, folks, it’s not exhaustive!):
The majority of teachers — especially in elementary school — are neither properly qualified nor trained and “upgraded” on a regular basis. The student-teacher ratio is one of the lowest in the world. The curriculum is poorly thought out, even illogical. One depressing example is the recent plan to drop science, social studies and reduce English instruction, replacing them with “character building” subjects like Islamic studies and local culture. There are also too many subjects taught, and they are spread too thinly, over-burdening students.
In fact, the curriculum in general is not geared to “learning for the future”, as a good education must be. The exam and evaluation system also needs much improvement. It’s currently aimed more at simply “passing” the student rather than making him or her understand what is being taught. And, of course, there is a serious lack of professionalism among the regional education officers and school staff, including headmasters and school administrators.
While the education budget is high enough — approximately Rp 70 trillion (US$7.2 billion) allocated for the central level and Rp 200 trillion for the regions — it is not properly allocated. Partly as a result, infrastructure is very bad: of about 900,000 elementary school classrooms throughout the country, only 42 percent are in good shape, 35 percent are in disrepair and almost 25 percent are heavily damaged. Books are likewise often incomplete, and many schools don’t have laboratories or even libraries. Some even lack roofs or walls!
Wow! This is equivalent to a train-wreck in a country where school-age children number 58 million. And children are supposed to be our future? The way things are going, are we slowly but surely flushing our future down the toilet?
Then I read about the PISA tests.
No, nothing to do with that leaning tower in Italy. PISA stands for the Program for International Student Assessment of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and it has become the leading international benchmark for education.
Andreas Schleicher, the head of PISA — a tall, slender, flinty-eyed, snow-haired German statistician — designed a test administered to hundreds of thousands of 15 year-olds around the world that gives “unprecedented insight into how well national education systems are preparing their students for adult life…[and]… their readiness for ‘knowledge worker’ jobs — their ability to think critically and solve real-world problems”.
In a fascinating and inspiring TED talk, Schleicher said that the story of PISA is “a story of how international comparisons have globalized the field of education that we usually treat as an affair of domestic policy”.
The latest PISA results (in 2010) were a “Shanghai surprise”: the largest city of the People’s Republic of China came out with top scores. Shanghai students, including migrant students, were highest in every aspect (math, reading and science).
When it comes to countries, however, Finland and South Korea rank number one and two on the PISA scale. According to Schleicher, South Korea shows what’s possible. Two generations ago, its standard of living was the same as Afghanistan today, one of the lowest education performers. Today, every Korean finishes high school. By contrast, the US — No. 1 in the 1960s — now ranks 17th.
One of Schleicher’s several encouraging findings is that “we no longer live in a world that is neatly divided between rich and well-educated countries and poor and badly-educated ones”. Luxembourg for example, spends as much per student as Korea but ranks only in the 20s. He also says that there are several countries that combine excellence with equity, which is good news for poor village children worldwide — including in Indonesia!
Schleicher’s conclusion: “In a global economy, it is no longer national improvement that’s the benchmark for success, but the best performing education systems internationally”.
And that’s big question: Can Indonesia reinvent its school system and do a Korea before it’s too late? Maybe not, but even a Luxembourg wouldn’t be bad outcome, given where PISA puts us now — a sad number 58 (out of 66). ●
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