Educational Disaster: Crisis over Government-employed Teachers, Lecturers
Our government officials often use Finland as a reference, but they somehow forget to pay attention to how the Finnish government sees teachers, who have as prestigious a profession as doctors and engineers.
Kompas, in coincidence with the National Teacher's Day (25/11/2022), ran a story, "Pengangkatan Satu Juta Guru PPPK Karut-marut” (The Appointment of 1 Million PPPK Teachers is Chaotic). It reflects a fundamental problem in our national education: the crisis over the availability of government-employed teachers.
The crisis indeed is lingering, which is a mockery of the fact that teachers are the main element in education. A school with complete facilities and well-established curriculum still cannot provide proper education if it lacks teachers.
On the other hand, suppose there were no school buildings and no curriculum; the education process would still run well as long as well-qualified teachers were available, because they could impart their knowledge elsewhere: in residents' homes, at villagers’ gathering halls or even under a tree. They have the knowledge to create their own curriculum, adjusted to local needs.
Singapore and Finland are among the small countries we can turn to in that that they prioritize teachers to serve excellent education. They have good-quality education because they pay great attention to the quality and welfare of teachers.
Also read:
> The Appointment of 1 Million PPPK Teachers is Chaotic.
> Fighting for Teachers’ Welfare
Our government officials often use Finland as a reference, but they somehow forget to pay attention to how the Finnish government sees teachers, who have as prestigious a profession as doctors and engineers. Those who enter teacher-training schools receive the same respect as those who follow medical and engineering.
Japan also prioritizes teachers. When Hiroshima and Nagasaki were devastated by the atomic bombs, Emperor Hirohito's concern was not how many generals survived but how many teachers remained. He believed the availability of teachers would help drive Japan’s rise and reconstruction to show to the outside world its rebuilding capacity, as it indeed has proven today.
Unfortunately, concern about the fate of teachers is not evident from our national leadership. The birth of Law No. 14/2005 concerning teachers and lecturers had initially served as an oasis to grow interest in improving the fate of teachers. The enactment of this law drew interest in teaching and lifted up the passing grade for admission to LPTK (institutions or universities that organize the education for prospective teachers). Many of the top-ten senior high school (SMA) or vocational school (SMK) graduates entered the teacher-training institutions.
The recruitment of PPPK teachers needs to be done only as part of emergency measures, not as permanent policymaking.
They were keen to become PNS teachers (permanently employed teachers with the status of civil servants) who received regular allowance in the hope their fate would improve as teachers. However, interest in registering with LPTKs dropped again when the government looked hesitant in hiring PNS teachers. Instead, it was inclined to increase the number of teachers with the status of contract-based government employees (PPPK). Seeing it as a less-promising status, graduates with good academic performance of SMA/SMK became disinclined to enroll for LPTKs.
As a consequence, the quality of input in LPTKs, which went up following the issuance of the law on teacher and lecturer, has now dropped. In the long run, the massive recruitment of PPPK teachers will degrade further the quality of the LPTK graduates, putting national education in peril.
The downward trend in PNS teacher recruitment began post-1998 political reform. There once was a time when no PNS teacher was recruited at all. The same situation has plagued the state universities (PTN) across the country, with the result that they became increasingly hesitant to hire PNS lecturers.
During Susilo Bambang Yudoyono’s administration, a program was launched to promote contract-based teachers to become civil servants. This triggered interest among LPTK graduates to apply for contract-based teaching programs with the hopes of securing civil-servant status. Currently, the recruitment of PNS teachers is very minimal because the need for teachers is met by PPPK (contract-based) teachers. The recruitment of PPPK teachers needs to be done only as part of emergency measures, not as permanent policymaking.
Why civil servants?
Why should teachers and lecturers be civil servants? Are PPPK teachers and lecturers not also state civil apparatus (ASN) and more efficient in employment? They are, if we look at the issue only from a budget perspective. However, education concerns many basic things beyond finance, which ought to be considered.
First, working as a civil servant is still of great interest among university graduates, whether state or private, because it is believed to have the capacity to provide occupation contentment, post-work financial security, career development, livelihood facilities and guaranteed work severance (as long as they do not commit any serious offense). Civil-servant status gives them security and peace of mind so that they can focus on their duties at school and on-campus.
It is understandable that university graduates, including prospective teachers and lecturers, pursue PNS status. The university graduates who become PNS teachers/lecturers are generally those who have excelled in academic performance, while those who fail to qualify for PNS teachers/lecturers are forced to compromise their expectations by becoming contract-based teachers/lecturers with the hope that will serve as leverage to ASN PPPK status.
Second, becoming a contract-based teacher/lecturer looks unattractive to graduates, especially those from notable universities, because they see it as lacking in the assurance of financial wellbeing. With the employment status being unclear, they would be vulnerable to layoffs or partial treatment in teaching-hour allotment only because superiors dislike them. They are also deterred because the occupation status does not entail post-work financial security, career development or welfare facilities. All these factors may cause distractions to their teaching activity either at school or on campus.
They are physically at school/campus, but their minds and hearts are elsewhere as they rack their brains to find a better occupation. They have no option but signing themselves up as PPPK teachers/lecturers following their non-qualification for PNS teachers/lecturers, while they may not have enough pluck to venture into the more-challenging private sector.
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> Funding Higher Educational Studies
> Problems of Contract Teachers
So, there are two problems regarding PPPK teachers/lecturers: doubted quality and unclear status. In terms of quality, they are not the best graduates from notable universities. Their status as contract-based employees brings about vulnerability to layoffs and mediocrity in level of welfare. They are not entitled to allowances except the teacher's professional allowance, given when they have passed certification.
If the policy over PPPK teachers/lecturers is maintained, the government will be pulling down the national education into a self-dug hole in blatant systematic degradation. This is an alarming call over the resilience of the nation and state because the reverberating fallout would be far more devastating than the last earthquake in Cianjur, West Java.
This nation would be increasingly intellectually mediocre and easily fall prey to colonialization of manufactured products as well as “crocodiles” from outside. This nation would become vulnerable to division conspiracy.
Third, we should admit objectively we do lack PNS teachers and lecturers. Data at the State Civil Service Agency (2021) show there are only 1,345,201 PNS teachers and 75,430 PNS lecturers.
Data also show we currently have 436,353 schools, consisting of 171,509 state schools and 264,744 private schools. The state-educational institutions under the auspices of the Education, Culture, Research and Technology Ministry number 209, whether academies, higher schools, institutes or universities. With only 1.3 million PNS teachers and just over 75,000 PNS lecturers, the state is too understaffed to move toward quality education.
Be mindful that the responsibility to provide PNS teachers and lecturers covers not only state schools and universities, but also private schools and universities, even though they are assigned only as part of government-administered assistance program. Private schools and universities are present in the equally pivotal role of educating the nation. All state schools are currently experiencing a shortage of PNS teachers.
If the policy over PPPK teachers/lecturers is maintained, the government will be pulling down the national education into a self-dug hole in blatant systematic degradation.
Addressing the shortage of PNS teachers by turning to PPPK teachers clearly does not embody a precautionary measure against educational disaster. Similarly, to overcome the shortage of PNS lecturers at state universities, especially those with legal entities (PTNBH), by allowing state universities leeway in recruiting respective lecturers, is also not appropriate because it will add to the burden on society.
During a meeting of the PTNBH Professors Council at the University of Indonesia (UI), on 25 Nov. 2022, a professor from a state university in Central Java revealed that his institution needed Rp 300 billion (US$19.22 million) for the lecturers' payroll, while the government subsidy was only Rp 100 billion. Who should bear the remaining Rp 200 billion? Inevitably, the institution shifted the funding responsibility to students by increasing tuition fees. So, with the government no longer taking a hand in recruiting PNS lecturers at PTNBH, the funding burden has to be shouldered by the public via higher tuition fees. The implications are that state universities, including PTNBH, are now struggling to get new qualified lecturers because they prefer to build a career in the private sector or become civil servants in other ministerial institutions they see as more prospective.
A civil-engineering study program at a leading state university, for example, has only six senior lecturers with lecturing experiences leaving too wide a gap between them and the rest (young lecturers). Institutionally, this study program appears to be ineligible in terms of resources to compete with its global peers due to the limited number of competent lecturers. This phenomenon massively occurs in all of our state universities.
Looking back on New Order
The government needs to learn from the New Order regime in seeing to teachers and lecturers. When reaping the windfall from oil prices (in the 1970s), the government recruited teachers on a large scale to be placed in all state elementary schools (SD), including those newly established across rural regions under the presidential instruction (known as SD Inpres).
Again, the government largely allocated budget, thanks to thriving timber exports in the 1980s, for the recruitment of junior high school (SMP) teachers on a large scale to be placed in state SMPs throughout the districts. Some were seconded to private SMPs. The recruitment of SMA and SMK teachers on a large scale took place in the 1990s, to be distributed to the schools in the districts.
Around that period, all state universities also moved to recruit new PNS lecturers every year. In fact, many of them were seconded to private universities. The New Order regime prioritized the provision of PNS teachers and lecturers, realizing that teachers and lecturers were the main pillars for building the nation.
Among policymakers today, there are those with a wrong mindset. In the last decade, the recruitment of new civil servants has been implemented en masse, but mostly assigned to ministries or government institutions for public services, not for basic services (education, health).
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> Education Still Relies on Contract Teachers
The government must realize that the quality of basic services will give weight to the quality of public services. Therefore, fulfilling the need for civil servants for basic services should be a priority. Public services, because of their dynamism in nature, will be more appropriately catered to by PPPK (contract-based) recruitment so that, if they do not perform, they can be released by contract termination and replaced by more-competent workforce.
However, what is happening is the other way around. The ministerial or institutional public services are filled with civil servants, while teachers, lecturers, doctors and nurses are recruited via PPPK policy. In fact, the quality of basic services is greatly influenced by the level of competence, experience and commitment of the servants to the services. PPPK teachers/lecturers find it difficult to fulfill these prerequisites because of unclear status and low welfare provision.
There are still two years for President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo's administration to get policies right in the hopes there will be no major disasters in the education sector. First, reduce the recruitment of civil servants for ministries or institutions’ public services and allot more slots for teachers, lecturers, doctors and nurses.
Second, considering the annual retirement of teachers and lecturers, which is quite a large figure, filling in the formation of PNS teachers and lecturers needs to be done every year to ensure an uninterrupted-regeneration process. Third, stop the process of privatizing state universities to become PTNBH as enforced by the National Education System Law, which specifies that a maximum of eight years after the National Education System Bill was passed into law, all state universities had to change their status to PTNBH.
The current development shows that after a notable state university has changed to PTNBH, it is increasingly difficult to get qualified prospective lecturers because the status and welfare situation of university/institute lecturers fails to give them pride, being overshadowed by PNS lecturers.
Darmaningtyas
Darmaningtyas, Administrator of the Tamansiswa Educational Institution
This article was translated by Musthofid.
