Independent Education Standards More Ideal

An independent body like the National Education Standardization Agency (BSNP) is more likely to guarantee the education standards.

KOMPAS/HARIS FIRDAUS

Minister of Education, Culture, Research, and Technology Nadiem Anwar Makarim with children at the Tamansiswa Pendopo, Yogyakarta City, Tuesday (14/9/2021). On that occasion, Nadiem also held a dialogue with a number of teachers and school principals.

The widespread application of digital technology and the arrival of the Fourth Industrial Revolution have disrupted various fields, including education.

With the added long-term effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, these changes should inspire us to focus on work programs and activities that address disruption in the education sector. However, this is not what is happening. As is the case with research, we spend too much of our time on altering administrative processes and organizational governance. People say we are a nation obsessed with bureaucracy.

In the Kompas daily on Monday (20/9/2021), we read about how the dissolution of the National Education Standardization Agency (BSNP) through Education, Culture, Research and Technology Ministerial Regulation No. 28/2021 on organization and governance, dated 23 Aug. 2021, was legally flawed. The authority to create and develop the national education standards was then transferred to the ministry’s Education Standardization, Curriculum and Assessment Agency.

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The ministry and education stakeholders, as well as observers, all have varying opinions. Meanwhile, the media is highlighting the issues and prioritizing the interests of education and its constituents, mainly students.

The nomenclature of the BSNP as explained by the ministry’s inspector general, Chatarina M. Girsang, does not exist in Law No. 20/2003 on the National Education System. What exists instead is a provision on an education standardization, guarantee and a quality control agency as stipulated in Article 35. Moreover, considering that the BSNP members were appointed and dismissed by the minister and that the minister also decides on the standards it produces, the BSNP is not an independent institution. Thus, its dissolution does not violate the National Education System Law.

KOMPAS/TOTOK WIJAYANTO

The children took part in a drawing together under the Port toll road, Sunday (13/6/2021).

On the other hand, law professors Johannes Gunawan and Bernadette M. Waluyo from Parahyangan Catholic University offered the perspective that the National Education System Law mandates the issuance of a Government Regulation (PP) on standardization agencies. As a result, PP No. 19/2005 was issued on national education standards, or the BSNP. This was discussed during a Ngobrol Pintar discussion themed “Education without Standards”, held on Sunday (19/9).

The two professors both concluded that the dissolution of the BSNP violated the National Education System Law and needed to be rectified.

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In his article published in Kompas on Saturday (4/9), former higher education director general (1999-2007) Satryo Soemantri Brodjonegoro wrote that after Article 35, Paragraph (3) of the National Education System Law was an explanation that specified that the education standardization, guarantee and quality control agency was to be independent at both the national and provincial levels. This view idealizes an independent standardization body that has minimal intervention from the government as merely one education stakeholder, as opposed to a decision-maker.

According to these arguments, we are of the view that the existence of an independent body like the BSNP is more likely to guarantee the education standards. This would be more ideal.

This article was translated by Kesya Adhalia.