JURNAL INTERNATIONAL - Education reforms in Indonesia in the twenty-first century

International Education Journal, 2007, 8(1), 172-183. ISSN 1443-1475 © 2007 Shannon Research Press. http://iej.com.au 172

Education reforms in Indonesia in the twenty-first century

Raihani

  

University of Melbourne, Australia raihani@pgrad.unimelb.edu.au

This article examines the reforms in education that have been occurring in Indonesia following the socio-political change marked by the fall of the Soeharto regime. Democratic citizens are now desired explicitly in the 2003 Education Act. As the decentralisation policy in governance has been implemented, autonomy in education has resulted in several consequent reforms. School Based Management has been chosen as a new paradigm in school management, while the new curriculum focuses on competency-based principles and school-based development. However, obstacles including cultural and economical barriers are assumed potentially to hinder the success of the implementation of reforms, if not carefully and appropriately handled.

Indonesian education; school-based management; competency-based curriculum; education reform; education autonomy

 

INTRODUCTION

  

Since the fall of the New Order1 regime in 1998 in Indonesia, many changes have been or are occurring. In terms of policy, the restriction to two periods of the presidency, direct election, and the implementation of the policy of autonomy are among the significant reforms. These changes have had an impact on education. However, information about such changes and the impact in Indonesia, written in scholarly articles and internationally accessible, is hardly found. This article is, therefore, in a way intended to reduce the lack of information by examining educational reforms in Indonesia around the turn of the twenty-first century and presenting it to international readers. The first section describes the change in objectives of Indonesian education, taking The 2003 Education Act into account. The second section examines the recent education management reform following the implementation of The Regional Autonomy Act in 1999. This reform was marked by the implementation of School-Based Management (SBM) as a new paradigm in school management. The third section reviews the reform in school curricula that now focus on a competency-based approach in teaching processes and a school-based approach in its development. Finally, this article points out several challenges that are likely to hinder the success of the implementation of such reforms, if they are not handled appropriately.

1 New Order or Orde Baru is a term used to refer to a period of Indonesian modern history after the fall of Sukarno (Old Order or Orde Lama) in 1966. The changing order was marked with the coup de état of the PKI (Indonesian Communist Party) on the 31st of September, 1965. In 1966, General Soeharto took power and became the second Indonesian president. In 1998, following the severe economical crisis that hit Asian countries including Indonesia, Soeharto was forced to resign, and the New Order regime collapsed. The current order, frequently called the Reform Era, began. Raihani 173

2 The Education Acts in Indonesia are explicitly mentioned in the Indonesian 1945 Constitution (Undang-Undang Dasar 1945) for government to issue as a legal foundation for the establishment of the national education system. The constitution says, ‘each citizen has the right to education’, and ‘government must carry out a national education system, which is arranged by national acts’ (MPR, 2003).

OBJECTIVES OF INDONESIAN EDUCATION

  

In accordance with the socio-political changes, the Acts2 associated with the Indonesian national education system have been issued several times after Independence in 1945 up to the most recent time including in 1950, 1956, 1989, (Poerbakawatja, 1970; Tilaar, 1995) and in 2003. The 2003 Act (Indonesian National Education System Act or INESA) is regarded as important since Indonesia has undergone dramatic recent changes particularly in the political system with the movement from authoritarianism to democracy, which started shortly after the fall of the Soeharto or New Order regime in 1998. The governance system has also changed, from centralist to decentralist or, rather, to what is popularly termed as ‘otonomi yang lebih luas’ meaning a ‘wider autonomy’ (Jalal & Supriadi, 2001).

As stated in INESA 2003, national education is aimed at developing each student’s potential to become people with faith and piety towards God the Only One, good morality, good health, knowledge, intelligence, creativity, independence, and to become democratic and responsible citizens [my translation] (Departemen Pendidikan Nasional, 2003d, 2, article 2). There is an emphasis in The Act on religious and moral values, intellectual competences, and democratic values.

Although Indonesia is not a theocratic country, the people put religion as one of the main considerations in their activities. Indeed, UUD (the State Constitution) 1945 emphasises that each citizen must adhere to a religion (Ministry of Public Religion (MPR), 2003). There are now at least five religions formally recognised by the Indonesian Government, the main ones being Islam, Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Confucianism. It can be understood, therefore, that religion plays an influential role in almost every aspect of life in Indonesia including education (Novera, 2004). Religious values are taken as one of the educational standards and objectives. These values are expected to become an integrated part of students’ personality, and to be manifested in their morality (Tilaar, 1999). These religious and moral objectives have been repeated explicitly in each Indonesian Education Act (Poerbakawatja, 1970; Tilaar, 1995), though there has been an ongoing apprehensiveness that such objectives have not been achieved (Adimassana, 2000; Sudarminta, 2000).

As education should be able to develop specific cognitive, psychomotor, and affective objectives (Bloom, 1956), practising religious morality is not sufficient for children to survive in this competitive era. A range of attributes is needed such as the basic competences and life skills (Bailin, Case, Coombs, & Daniels, 1999; Blank, 1982; Bloom, 1956; Cameron, 1986; Campbell, 1996; Metais, 1999). However, as Muhaimin, Suti’ah, and Ali (2001) and Darmaningtyas (2004) have pointed out critically, the Indonesian education system has so far placed a heavy emphasis on cognitive attainment by students. Knowledge learnt and mastered by students has been separated from its application (Darmaningtyas, 2004). Learning objectives would seem to have beeen formulated for students to meet certain targets of curriculum content without sufficient attention being given to the issue of how the learnt knowledge was to be applied in real life (Joni, 2000). Consequently, many school graduates are unable to take active roles in the community and survive at a time when change and competition have become common features (Darmaningtyas, 2004; Joni, 2000; Tilaar, 1999).

After the fall of the Soeharto or New Order regime, Indonesia underwent a dramatic change, particularly in terms of the political system, as it moved from authoritarianism to democracy. This 174 Education reforms in Indonesia in the twenty-first century

 

has had a great impact on education, as education cannot be separated from politics (Jalal & Supriadi, 2001). Students need to be enlightened to the democratic values and practices, as indicated in INESA 2003. Hochschild and Scovronick (2002) stated that schools were a crucial locus for educating children to become democratic citizens, who contributed to constructing and sustaining a democratic country. Azra (2002) argued that a democratic governance system had become an unavoidable trend since the fall of the Soeharto regime, because of both global and local demands. Thus, an important stage for Indonesians has been reached in that the phrase ‘warga Negara yang demokratis’ (democratic citizens) was explicitly put in The 2003 Act, and was absent in The 1989 Act, as one of the objectives of education.

These three aspects of objectives are to be integrated into the personalities of Indonesian children. They are expected to exercise religious and moral practices and values, be intelligent, have life skills, be democratic, and be responsible to the nation. These objectives certainly have significant implications for other parts of the national education system, particularly management and curriculum.

 

SCHOOL MANAGEMENT REFORM

  

As described earlier, the current political reform, marked initially with the fall of the Suharto regime in 1998, had an impact on education. The decentralisation policy in the governance of the state had significantly influenced educational management and the curriculum. As a result, in 1999, ‘Manajemen Berbasis Sekolah’ or school-based management (SBM) was introduced to reduce the severe dominance of the central (Jakarta) authority over almost every aspect of schooling.

According to the World Bank Report in 1998, Indonesia had had very centralised management with regard to education until 1999 (The World Bank, 1998). The central educational authority determined almost every aspect of schooling, while subordinate authorities (offices at the provincial and district levels) only had to implement the policies. Consequently, as the World Bank concluded, that there were ineffective institutional arrangements in the Indonesian education system. These ineffective arrangements resulted in some major constraints:

a) a division of responsibility for delivery of primary education among various government agencies and ministries which resulted in a lack of accountability for results;

b) overly centralised management at the junior secondary level;

c) little autonomy for principals and lower level managers, leading to ineffective school management;

d) a fragmented and rigid budgetary process; and

e) civil service incentive structures that did not reward good teaching practices and led to an uneven allocation of teachers in schools (Jiyono et al., 2001; The World Bank, 1998).

In line with the centralised management, as Umaedi (2001) and Jalal and Supriadi (2001) stated, Indonesian educational management had been very largely macro-oriented. Tilaar (1999) explained that the policies about school affairs were issued heavily based on macro educational analysis. Bjork (2003) and Tilaar agreed (1999) that policy based on case studies was hardly ever found. Consequently, different needs of particular schools were not addressed on an individual basis. All schools received the same treatment.

 

It is through Act No.22/1999 of Otonomi Daerah (Regional Autonomy) that an ever-major decentralisation of the country’s policies and management has occurred. According to Jalal and Supriadi (2001, pp.124-5), the objectives of the decentralisation are to:

1. lessen the central government’s burden and its interventions over local problems;

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2. improve people’s understanding and their support for social and economic development;

3. plan better programs of social and economic improvement at the local level;

4. train people to manage their own affairs; and

5. strengthen the national unity.

In the field of education, the decentralisation policy was not only a national issue, but also a global movement. Bjork (2003) explained that in recent years international funding organisations have provided a large amount of money for the promotion of the decentralisation of education systems around the globe. Proponents of this approach argued that decentralisation would result in one or more of these following outcomes: (a) redistribution of power, (b) increased efficiency, or (c) greater sensitivity to local culture (Bjork, 2003). These three outcomes corresponded to the problems that Indonesia had faced owing to the overlapping and centralised management, as indicated previously.

 

Although the decentralisation of education had previously been one of the growing concerns of the New Order regime marked, for instance, by The Government Act No.28/1990 (Jalal & Supriadi, 2001; Tilaar, 1999), there was no serious change made in the early 1990s in that regard. Criticisms on the implementation of such an Act and related decisions included both the lack of political will to implement such decentralisation, and the limited scope of decentralised matters, which covered only school physical development and maintenance (Jalal & Supriadi, 2001). This did not touch the more fundamental aspects of education, such as curriculum and instruction, and managerial issues, such as budget and recruitment of teachers and other staff.

However, the current decentralisation policy in education was marked significantly by the introduction of School-Based Management (SBM) to primary and secondary schools in 1999 (Jalal & Supriadi, 2001; Umaedi, 2001). This introduction has been one way of implementing the policy of educational autonomy embedded in Act No. 22/1999. This also corresponds to the global perspective that SBM is now becoming a common phenomenon, believed to be a promising means for whole school improvement. Advocates of this approach have argued that within SBM schools, where democratic structure and culture were promoted, improvements in all aspects of school became more feasible and possible (Caldwell & Spinks, 1998; Cheng, 1996; Everard & Morris, 1996; Gamage, Sipple, & Partridge, 1996; Mohrman, Wohlstetter, & Associates, 1994; Wohlstetter, Van Kirk, Robertson, & Mohrman, 1997).

Umaedi, the former Director of Secondary Education of the Ministry of National Education (MNE), asserted that SBM in Indonesia had been implemented to improve school quality (Umaedi, 2001). Therefore, some functions were being decentralised with which individual schools were supposed to deal in the sense that they were given a greater proportion of the responsibility and power of doing so. The developed functions include learning and teaching processes, school program planning and evaluation, curriculum development, staff management and recruitment, resources and facilities maintenance, finance management, student services, school-community partnership, and school culture development (2001, p.22).

Translating the above plan, Jiyono et al. (2001, pp.161-3) proposed a model for Indonesian SBM, which had five basic components – management, teaching and learning processes, human resources, resources and administration, and school council.

1. Management focuses on: (a) providing school organisational management and leadership, (b) developing school planning and policies, (c) managing school operations, (d) ensuring an established effective communication between school and the community, (e) encouraging the community participation, and (f) maintaining the school accountability.

176 Education reforms in Indonesia in the twenty-first century
 3 Managing Basic Education (MBE) is a project of improving basic education in Indonesia within the framework of SBM. This project is funded by USAID, and conducted in several districts in Java. Further information of MBE can be accessed on http://www.mbeproject.net/.

2. Teaching and learning process functions to (a) improve the students’ learning, (b) develop suitable learning programs to meet students’ needs, (c) offer effective instructions, and (d) provide students with personality development programs.

3. Human resources function to (a) distribute and place staff with the ability to fulfil students’ needs, (b) select staff with knowledge of SBM, (c) promote continuous professional development, (d) ensure the prosperity of staff and students, and (e) promote discussions of school processes.

4. Resources and administration function to (a) identify and allocate the resources available in accordance with the needs, (b) manage school funds, (c) provide supporting administration, and (d) provide for the building maintenance.

5. The school committee, comprising the active participation of community leaders, professionals, principals, teacher representatives, the district education authority representatives, and parent representatives, is responsible to elect the principal, collect money, control school finance sourcing from the community, block grant, central government’s funds (except salary), and be involved in curriculum development.

In order for each above component to function properly, Jiyono et al. (2001) set up two pre-requisites. (1) Funds should be allocated and directly given to individual schools, contrasting with the long tradition in which funds were given to schools through long bureaucratic lines. (2) SBM-skilled staff should be available in the first instance in order to support and ensure effective implementation. Once these two pre-requisites were met, according to Jiyono et al. (2001), the implementation of SBM in Indonesia was on track. Unfortunately, until now, the investigator has not found from the accessible literature, so far, any research-based evidence of how SBM has been implemented.

 

Some Indonesian school principals, who were participating in a workshop of SBM conducted by the Managing Basic Education (MBE)3, have defined the characteristics essential to Indonesian SBM. While these characteristics were indeed not drawn from the factual phenomena of the Indonesian SBM through a scientific inquiry, they importantly revealed the principals’ understandings and expectations of SBM. The characteristics were as follows:

1. The vision and mission of the school are formulated by the principal, teachers, representative of students, school alumni and other stakeholders.

2. There is a school development plan based on this vision and mission.

3. A school budget plan, in line with the school development plan, is developed transparently by the principal, teachers, and school committee.

4. School autonomy is realised, as shown by the school becoming more self-supporting and focused on meeting local needs.

5. There is participatory and democratic decision-making.

6. The school is open to criticism, input, and suggestions from anyone to improve the program.

7. Everyone at school is committed to carrying out the agreed vision and mission.

8. All the potential of school stakeholders is utilised to achieve the goal.

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9. There is a working atmosphere conducive to improving school performance.

10. There is an ability to create a sense of pride among staff and the local community.

11. There is transparency and public accountability in implementing all activities (Managing Basic Education (MBE) Project).

These characteristics indicate implicitly some fundamental issues of SBM including: (a) school governances structure, (b) school autonomy, (c) shared decision-making, (d) school curriculum, (e) school management and leadership, and (f) staff professional development. However, the characteristics are not systematically conceptualised. Rubiannoor (2003), in his study of the principal’s roles in implementing the SBM in a school in South Kalimantan, concluded that the principal was found to have understood his new role in the SBM implementation: (a) developing the school vision and mission, (b) setting strategies for quality improvement, and (c) implementing participative management. However, since the school was only at the stage of preparing for the SBM implementation, proper assessment of the implementation phase could not be done. He also found that human resources such as staff and teacher readiness cognitively, mentally, and culturally were among the problems that might hinder the success of the implementation (Rubiannor, 2003, pp.146-9).

 

SCHOOL CURRICULUM REFORM

  

According to Mohrman et al. (1994) and Wohlstetter, Van Kirk, Robertson and Mohrman (1997), SBM should be seen as part of a more systemic set of changes, not as an isolated innovation, since it would not automatically improve the schools’ and students’ performance. A systemic set of changes in the SBM schools should encompass the introduction of new approaches to teaching and learning. In other words, structural reform through SBM implementation should happen side-by-side with, and connected strongly to, curriculum and instruction reform (Wohlstetter et al., 1997).

In line with the above argument, and following SBM implementation, the Indonesian Education Authority introduced a new curriculum: Kurikulum Berbasis Kompetensi (KBK: Competency-Based Curriculum) in 2003. This curriculum began to be implemented in 2004. Therefore, the official name for this curriculum was Kurikulum 2004 (the 2004 curriculum). According to MNE, this new curriculum put an emphasis on standardised competences that the students were to achieve and on a greater authority for the school stakeholders to participate in the curriculum development. Kwartolo (2002) explained that the aim of the 2004 Curriculum implementation was to produce the outcome of students with strong personality, and good competences and skills, in order that they would be able to develop successfully further such qualities either in the workforce or in higher education, and interact with the social, cultural, and natural environments.

A comparison between the 2004 Curriculum and the previous one, provided by the MNE (2003c), is summarised in Table 1. This comparison indicates, as Joni (2000), Sindhunata (2000), and Jalal and Supriadi (2001) suggest, in that the previous curriculum was material-oriented, overloaded with content, and centralist in its development.

The MNE (2003b, pp.35-7) also provided clear guidelines for curriculum development and management at every level—central and local authority, as well as school. The central authority plays the role of providing professional services for the regional or local curriculum developers, and seminars and workshops for quality curriculum improvement. The provincial authority functions to serve, support, monitor, and control syllabus implementation in the districts. Meanwhile, the district authority serves and supports the development, evaluation, and refinement of syllabuses. It also creates guidelines for schools in developing syllabuses, forms a team of the district syllabus developers, helps and analyses the school syllabus, and supervises and monitors 178 Education reforms in Indonesia in the twenty-first century

syllabus development and implementation. Schools are expected to develop their own syllabus, or use other schools’ syllabus, and to coordinate actively with the District to develop the syllabus.

 

Table 1. A Comparison of the 1994 and 2004 Curricula Similarities
1994 Curriculum	2004 Curriculum
• 9 year compulsory learning • emphasis on abilities of reading, writing, and arithmetical functions • essential concepts and materials in each subject to achieve competences • local content curriculum • 45 minutes allocated for each learning hour in every level of school	• 9 year compulsory learning • emphasis on abilities of reading, writing, and arithmetical functions • essential concepts and materials in each subject to achieve competences • local content curriculum • 45 minutes allocated for each learning hour in every level of school
Differences
• centralist • contains no standardised competences • no activities to familiarise students to content and concepts • no ICT • multiple choice assessment • thematic approach for grades 1 & 2 students of elementary school (recommended only) • no continuity of competences • no curriculum diversification • syllabus developed by the local education authority or school depending on needs	• decentralist • contains standardised competences • integrated and programmed activities to make students familiar with content and concepts • introduction of ICT • classroom-based assessment • thematic approach for grades 1 & 2 students of elementary school (compulsory) • continuity of competences stratification from grades 1 to 12 (over school levels) • curriculum diversification: special and international curricula • giving opportunities to teachers, schools, and local authority for program elaboration and adaptation or analysis of materials