What's Wrong with Indonesian Education?
Exploring Education in the 4th Most Populated Country in The World
Introduction
Home to over 270 million locals, Indonesia is one of the most populated country in the world, beating Mexico, Russia, even United Kingdom in terms of population. But does that mean it has better education? Let’s find out. As a middle school student in Indonesia, i have experienced school in Indonesia for almost 9 years (primary school for 6 years and middle school for almost 3 years). In the beginning, i thought Indonesian Education was just fine, but the more i research, the more i was shocked and concerned about the future of Indonesia.
In 2018, Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) examined students around the world from 79 countries resulting Indonesia in 74th place out of 79 countries, below nearby countries like Malaysia, Singapore, and Brunei Darussalam. I was sad and shocked of how bad Indonesian education was. From there, i realized there was something wrong in education in Indonesia and i found 5 things that made Indonesia one of the worst countries in terms of education.
1. Low-Quality Parents
Every year, KPAI (translated National Commission for Child Protection) receives 4500 cases of violation of children's rights and it turns out that the main perpetrators are parents. So, how did it happen? It happened because the parents aren’t intellectually mature and are not ready to be parents.
Now, i am a 9th grader and i saw a lot of students dating. So, what's the connection? Generally, in Indonesia dating is done starting from primary school to high school, or even in university. The majority of them aren’t serious to take the relationship further until marriage, and they didn’t plan how much kids will they have, where will they live, or their income to provide the life of them both. Dating is considered just "playing around”, and if one of your partners breaks up or cheats, that's normal, right? Because the majority of dating is not serious, because it isn’t bound by marriage.
Most of them did it just to vent lust and to show off to others. So, what's the connection? The impact is, because they’re not serious about having a relationship when they are teenagers, when they reach adulthood and wanted to get married, they think about marriage but they didn’t think about how to take care of children, reading books about children behavior, and don't understand how to have a good relationship with a partner and children. So, that’s the reason.
2. Education System
Usually, students in Indonesia study from 7:00 AM until 2:00 or 3:00 PM which is 7-8 hours a day with recess around 30 minutes. Indonesian student study 5 times a week from monday to friday with an average total of 40 hours a week (Recess time included). Education system in Indonesia consists of 12 years of compulsary education which is 6 years in primary school, 3 years in middle school, and 3 years in high school. In the newest curriculum, there are 11 subjects which are religion, civics, Indonesian language, math, natural science, social science, english, physical education, informatics, art & culture, and local content.
As far as my experience, every 2 or 3 weeks when one or two chapters of certain subject has been completed, there will be a daily test which is a standardized test with a minimum score of 70 or 75 out of 100 and if you don’t pass the test you will experience remedial until you get a minimum score. Standardized test are also common in Indonesia every semester and grade promotion. In my opinion, this is one of the reason that learning in Indonesia is stressful instead of fun, because you must always prepare for the exam and experience fear if you don’t pass the exam and don’t get the perfect score that your parents and teachers want. Also, don’t forget about the homework that you must complete in time or you’ll be punished by the teacher.
The government must also prioritize the welfare of children. In a public school, one class can contain up to 30 students even with no air conditioner and minimum windows (The temperature in Indonesia is quite hot especially in daytime reaching up to 32 degrees celsius) resulting in poor air quality. This is bad for the health of the students, and the learning process because our brain doesn’t work optimally when there’s too much carbon dioxide. For the brain to work optimally, there are 3 things that is important in a classroom, which is fresh air with the right capacity of people in one classroom, frequent but short breaks like every 45 minutes of learning, 15 minutes break to bring the back the focus, and a peaceful classroom (Things like reducing the background noise, maintaining a calm and stress-free classroom, and dividing the place or time for students to have discussion will help).
There’s a lot to talk about the problem of indonesia education system, such as bullying, irrational school rules (for example prohibiting the male student to have long hair), moral educations that are only taught but not applied in everyday life such as littering, vandalism, and school brawls, and some of the lessons are irrelevant and useless. Of all that, i choose the “Some of the lessons are irrelevant and useless” to talk about. For example, students in primary school study frog circulatory system. Can you give me one benefit that i get from studying the frog circulatory system? Even when your goal is to be a doctor, it won’t be useful because the human circulatory system is more complex than the frog circulatory system plus there isn’t a vet that treats frog.
3. Low Reading Interest
UNESCO said that Indonesia ranks second from the bottom in terms of world literacy, meaning that interest in reading is very low. According to UNESCO data, the reading interest of the Indonesian people is very concerning, only 0.001%. That means, out of 1,000 Indonesians, only 1 person is an avid reader! What's the impact? The impact is that Indonesia's young generation is lazy, unproductive, unable to compete with the outside world, and lacks knowledge.
4. Teacher Quality
It seems that teachers in Indonesia are still undervalued compared to teachers abroad. In Indonesia, teachers are one of the profession that is underpaid and has high levels of stress. The average salary of a civil servant teacher is about 2,000,000 IDR which is 132 USD every month (source: pintek.id). Sadly, for honorary teachers they can be paid as low as 100,000 IDR which is 6$ every 3 months
So, how could this happen? This happens because in Indonesia everyone can be a teacher. A low-paying job is a job that everyone could do, but a high-paying job is a job that is highly needed but it can only be done by few people. This is why teachers in developed countries has high salary because in order to be a teacher, you must pass rigorous selection process, including having a master’s degree, went through many years of teacher training programs, and mastered pedagogical science and child psychology. On the contrary, in Indonesia everyone can be a teacher even though their teaching is bad, because in some school the most important thing is making a teaching administration.
Ironically, Indonesia’s neighbouring country Singapore, has way more salary than teachers in Indonesia. The estimated total pay for a teacher is 11,000 SGD per month, with an average salary of 4,000 SGD per month (source: glassdoor.com). If the total pay was converted into USD, it would be about 8000$. So, the conclusion is the reason why teachers in Indonesia have a low salary is because of their low competence.
5. Education Provider
After becoming an independent country for 77 years, Indonesia still need to improve its education for its country. The curriculum has change time to time, from the 2013 curriculum to the 2022 independent curriculum but nothing has changed significantly. Since the current minister of education Mr. Nadiem Makarim was elected, he made some policy and innovation including removing the “Ujian Nasional” (translated national exam) which was previously followed by every student in primary school in order to graduate to middle school. But the problem was the students were stressed, depressed, and some of them did suicide because the students were intimidated and given pressure by the teachers to graduate resulting in the abilities and talents of each students hampered.
He also innovated the 2022 curriculum “Kurikulum Merdeka” or you can call it the independent curriculum which means freedom in learning. The difference between the current curriculum to the previous one is the indpendent curriculum focuses on developing student’s character and morals, while the previous one focuses on students' academic abilities in general. The independent curriculum is more flexible and gives freedom to teachers to develop learning, while the previous one is more structured and has clear guidelines. But again, there was a problem which is the teachers didn’t adapt to the new way of teaching and focused on doing the teaching administration.
In my opinion, in order to create the best education for Indonesia, we must fix the education system and choose what’s best for the students in Indonesia, the government must monitor in schools whether the new and better education system is implemented well, and the education fund is is used well and given fairly for each region so that the facilites and quality of education in Indonesia are also evenly distributed. This is important because in order to give the best education for a country, we need the support of the education provider. On that note, I hope my writing can be a form of my effort to contribute to education in Indonesia. Let’s pray that Indonesian education is getting better and we have a chance to show the world of what indonesians are capable of.
Thankyou! See you in my next blog… Credit: Yt Guru Gembul