Ensuring More Effective Role for Teachers

Kompas/Didie SW

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Recognizing teachers as professionals, as stipulated in Law No. 14/2005 on Teachers and Lecturers, is intended to improve the quality of national education through improving the quality of teachers. However, after 12 years or so of various efforts, teacher quality has yet to improve and the issues of teacher shortages and unbalanced distribution persist at all education levels across the country.

Despite Culture and Education Ministry officials often saying that we do not have a “macro” teacher shortage with reference to the ideal teacher-to-student ratio – 1:18 for elementary schools (1:31 for teachers with permanent civil servant status, or PNS teachers), 1:17 for junior high schools (1:32 for PNS teachers), 1:16 for high schools (1:32 for PNS teachers) and 1:17 for vocational high schools (1:60 for PNS teachers) – Indonesia is in fact facing a serious teacher shortage that must be dealt with immediately to prevent the complete “collapse” of our school and education systems.

The December 2016 education ministry data showed that the country had 2,922,826 teachers comprised of 1,432,623 (49 percent) PNS teachers and 1,490,203 (51 percent) non-PNS teachers. Of these non-civil servant teachers, 812,064 (54.5 percent) are contract teachers for whom the recruitment and management systems remain unclear. Apart from this, 316,535 PNS teachers are expected to retire between 2016 and 2020, thereby heightening the teacher shortage problem (Kompas, 23/11/2016).

In fact, our schools have long suffered from a shortage of teachers, but frequent mapping exercises have merely highlighted aggregate teacher-to-student ratios without taking into account non-PNS teachers, especially contract teachers. This creates the impression that the problem lies in the unbalanced distribution of teachers. The teacher shortage and the problematic prevalence of contract teachers, in terms of both status and quality, are not seen as urgent issues. Consequently, the government (the administrative and bureaucratic reform, the home and the finance ministries) has included teachers in its moratorium on civil servant appointments.

On the other hand, Article 8 of Government Regulation No. 48/2005 bans all human resources and other personnel officials in government institutions from appointing contract workers. As a result, regional heads are reluctant to appoint contract teachers, despite Article 29, Point 4 of the Teachers and Lecturers Law requiring central and regional governments to appoint replacement teachers to fill vacancies. As of now, we have yet to hear any comprehensive scenario from the government to face this prolonged problem of teacher shortage and unbalanced distribution.

Recently, Culture and Education Minister Muhadjir Effendy issued the sensible Multi-skilled Teachers (GBG) policy, under which teachers are provide training to enable them to teach multiple school subjects. Despite its temporary and “emergency” nature, this policy must be expanded, considering that the government may not be able to appoint a huge number of new teachers in the next two to five years. Apart from state budget constraints, the problem also involves a lack of adequate human resource. The Teachers and Lecturers Law requires teachers to have either an undergraduate degree or a four-year diploma and a teaching certificate from the Teachers Professional Training Center (PPG) that has recently opened at several selected universities.

In the current condition, these centers can produce at most 3,000 to 5,000 new certified teachers every year. Through 2020, these PPGs would produce around 25,000 new certified teachers at most. Consequently, a policy is highly important to ensure more effective roles for teachers through the GBG program to prevent the lack of teachers at schools and the increasing prevalence of contract teachers – a complex problem for which the solution would be even more complex. Furthermore, the government must also prioritize the inclusion of non-PNS teachers, especially contract teachers, in the PPG certification stages (for those who are uncertified), so that they can meet the requirement to be appointed as PNS teachers.

The government must have a comprehensive grand design to resolve the problem of teachers once and for all and to formulate a proper foundation for a system that prepares and manages our future teachers. Such designs must be comprehensive and include programs to eradicate the various problems that shackle our education system. As long as teacher procurement and management remain chaotic and rife with emergency policies, our efforts to produce professional teachers will never produce quality, progressive teachers.

Progressive education

Since the concept of professionalism has been applied, the various programs for improving teacher quality have had no significant impact and have failed in reaching their goals, regardless of their positive side effects of financial improvement for a majority of teachers and increased interest among youths in becoming teachers. Normatively, some of these policies – including the requirement to set aside at least 20 percent of state and regional budgets for education toward defining participatory education and the professionalism of teachers – are good for advancing national education. However, their implementation has been poor and there has been no positive, measurable impact.

The national education budget, for instance, called Functional Budget for Education (Anggaran Fungsi Pendidikan), is very large (Rp 440.9 trillion, equal to US$30.86 billion in 2018), but the allocation is so fragmented that the budget is ineffective. The education ministry, with its sprawling mandates, tasks and functions (tupoksi), as well as huge public demand, is only “allocated” Rp 40.1 trillion (9.1 percent). Furthermore, the percentage of the budget allocated to education is greater than 20 percent in many regions. However, in reality, these figures often include a general allocation fund (DAU) and a special allocation fund (DAK). The “real” regional education budget, therefore, is actually pretty small in comparison. Consequently, any hopes of making leaps of progress in regional education are often dashed in the regional autonomy era.

Another example is the certification requirements for teachers. What should have been an opportunity for qualitative intervention have instead become a portfolio evaluation and the annual teachers’ competency test (at least, as it was originally planned). Under such processes, it seems impossible that teachers can become independent learners who are able to develop their professionalism sustainably. Pressures from all sides and pressing situations often force ministries managing education to apply hasty policies to “outsmart” existing regulations. Therefore, their policies often cannot be relied upon to ensure the advancement of teachers and the education system.

The various quantitative problems above seize our attention and energy, causing us to neglect quality and to be unresponsive to challenges. Today, our teachers and education system are facing great changes that need immediate and proper response.

Information technology advancements that have penetrated our schools often overwhelm our teachers, making them increasingly irrelevant in the eyes of our students and the general public. Massive developments in human rights and child protection issues, which can often be far-reaching, have disoriented our teachers and made them apathetic. Financial improvements due to professional allowance have resulted in culture shock and increasing transactionalism among our teachers.

Meanwhile, there has yet to be any significant outreach efforts, either from the government or professional organizations, to change teachers’ mindsets and nurture a pedagogical spirit that would enable teachers to continuously and dynamically improve themselves in line with current developments and new challenges. President Joko Widodo has requested many times that such incompatibilities in teaching and the education system be fixed. Our teachers and education system must be more flexible, responsive and contextual within various developments.

Numerous government programs are often projects of formality that follow an old-school format and a rigid budget, resulting in ineffective and non-contextual programs that are carried out merely to ensure that the budget is absorbed. Meanwhile, restrictions to various resources have resulted in the professional organizations’ inability to truly empower teachers. Central and local governments – in line with Article 41, Point 5 of the Teachers and Lecturers Law – should facilitate and cooperate with professional organizations to ensure directed, synergized and effective development and improvement of teacher competence.

Ensuring effective roles for teachers becomes a more urgent matter, considering that the ultimate goal of our education system is to develop national character and society. Character development through schooling necessitates that teachers be far more than just conveyors of knowledge in the school subjects that they manage. Teachers should also take and develop a prophetic role in forming productive character by encouraging students to be truthful and wise while avoiding mistaken and immoral ways. Despite the necessity of professionalism and linearity in the field of science, teachers must not be too focused on linearity at the expense of their educational functions.

In today’s globalized culture, teachers must prioritize their educational functions. Teachers are the pristine well of knowledge, a mirror that reflects the transmission and transformation of national culture. Teachers are fern leaf trees (filicium) that provides shade for their students, breathe life into thousands of organisms and serves as an important foundational chain in the ecosystem (Andrea Hirata in The Rainbow Troops, 2006:32).

MOHAMMAD ABDUHZEN

Advisor, Paramadina University Institute for Education Reform; Head of Research and Development at the Indonesian Teachers Association (PGRI)