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Copyright 2002 by The Institute of Asia Pacific Education Development
Asia Pacific Education Review 2002, Vol. 3, No. 1, 56-68.
The Reform of Secondary Education in Indonesia During the 1990s: Basic Education Expansion and Quality Improvement Through Curriculum Decentralization
MinHo Yeom University of Pittsburgh U.S.A.
Clementina Acedo University of Pittsburgh U.S.A.
Erry Utomo Ministry of National Education Indonesia
This case study attempts to examine basic education expansion and curriculum reform policies in Indonesia during the last decade. The study focuses on the context of educational reform to understand its rationale as well as the content and process of the reform policies, and the main barriers to effective reform implementation. The study is based on a review of policy documents and interviews with key participants in the decision-making and monitoring process. The reforms in the 1990s were concerned with providing quality-basic-education opportunities through basic education expansion and decentralizing the administrative structure of curriculum development. The expansion of basic education has been very successful. However there were a number of problems associated with the decentralization of the curriculum and it' s implementation: the implementation gap between the province and district level, the lack of appropriate teacher training, the teachers’ passive attitudes toward the policy, and the scarcity of resources and funding.
Since the 1970s, the education reform policies in Indonesia have proceeded in the context of human resources expansion for the purposes of national
development. In particular, the main reform initiatives in the 1990s focused on the quality of education. A number of efforts have been made to implement this policy. These include; (1) conducting training for teachers at the junior secondary and senior secondary school levels, (2) providing textbooks both for teachers and students, (3) supplying and distributing science equipment to schools, and (4) other activities related to the improvement of educational quality. The essential 1 reason for focusing on basic education is that although Indonesia has a large population and extensive natural resources, its economy and education system are not highly developed (Ministry of Education and Culture, 1998a; Ministry of National Education, 2000b; Southeast Asian Ministry of Education Organization, 1999). The reform of basic education in the 1990s at the national level took a number of forms. These included; basic education expansion, enhancing science and technology, curriculum decentralization, improving the quality of textbooks and teachers’ guides, developing the effectiveness of in-service teacher training, and promoting a conductive school and classroom environment (Ministry
MinHo Yeom, Doctoral student specializing in International and Development Education Perspectives (IDEP) under Social and Comparative Analysis in Education Program, University of Pittsburgh; Clementina Acedo, Assistant Professor of International Comparative Education, University of Pittsburgh; Erry Utomo, Technical staff at secondary curriculum development, Ministry of National Education. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to MinHo Yeom, Institute for International Studies, 5K26 Posvar Hall, School of Education, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA, 15260, U.S.A. Electronic mail may be sent via internet to miyst8@ pitt.edu. * This paper is part of the Secondary Education Reform Case Studies Project directed by professor Clementina Acedo at the Institute for International Studies, University of Pittsburgh, sponsored by USAID. We would like to thank Professor Mark B. Ginsburg (University of Pittsburgh), Professor Emeritus Don Adams (University of Pittsburgh) and John Hatch (USAID), who gave us meaningful comments helpful in finalizing this paper. 56
The Reform of Secondary Education in Indonesia
of Education and Culture, 1998b). In this case study, two main reforms, including basic educational expansion and curriculum decentralization, draw attention to basic educational quality. In this paper, the context of the reforms, the content and process of the reforms, and the evaluation of the reform policies, in particular curriculum decentralization, are discussed in order to understand the rationales and the lessons that can be learned from the implementation of these reforms.
In order to understand the educational reforms implemented in the 1990s, it is helpful to mention the recent political and economic trends along with some basic social and demographic fact. Indonesia is a country made up of about 17,000 islands with nearly 6,000 of them inhabited. The five biggest stretch across some 3,200 miles of equatorial oceans. It is the fourth most populous country in the world, with 224 million people who are ethnically and linguistically diverse, approximately 36 percent of whom are under 15 years old. The largest part of the population, approximately 60 percent, lives on Java, the smallest of the five major islands. Indonesia has more than 300 ethnic groups that speak more than 250 dialects. Indonesia, however, has a national and official language, Bahasa Indoenesia, which is spoken throughout the country from Sabang (the western area) to Merauke (the eastern area) (Purwadi & Muljoatmodjo, 2000; Southeast Asian Ministry of Education Organization, 1999; Statistics Indonesia of the Republic of Indonesia, 2001). Despite its diversity and size, Indonesia has one of the world’s most centralized social, political and economic systems. For example, in the case of its fiscal system, in fiscal year 1999, revenue collected by the central government amounted to 94 percent of general government revenue, and about 60 percent of sub-national spending was financed by central transfers. Since the early 1970s, several proposals have been made for fiscal decentralization, but the key elements have never been implemented. Indonesia' s overly centralized systems result in tenuous links between local demands and decisions on local public services, as well as a weak mechanism for local accountability (World Bank, 2000a).
57
Today, however, Indonesia is on the verge of a major decentralization process. Triggered by the financial crisis of 1997, the resignation of the Soeharto government, and the weak public support for the Habibie government, demands for political and fiscal decentralization increased in 1998. In April 1999, Parliament hastily adopted a law requiring that drastic decentralization measures be implemented in the fiscal 2001 year. The Law on Regional Governance specifies the political and administrative responsibilities for each level of government under a decentralized structure. Under this law, all public service delivery functions will be decentralized to sub-national governments except defense, foreign affairs, monetary and trade policy, and the legal system. Most public services, including education, health, and infrastructure, will be delivered by districts and cities, with provinces performing only the role of coordinator. The previous hierarchical relation between provinces and districts or cities will be abolished. Any task not specified in the law will fall to districts or cities (Malo, 1995; World Bank, 2000a). The economic crisis in Indonesia was an extraordinary, and largely unexpected, turnaround in economic performance starting in the last quarter of 1997 and extending through most of 1998. Although the economy had recovered stability by late 1998, there remained severe doubt regarding the capacity to quickly return to a high economic growth path. This meant labor markets would continue to experience considerable strain, with consequent adverse effects on social and family welfare, and for children. Increasing economic uncertainty until the end of 1997 was followed by a year of economic instability and decline. The economic collapse - a 14 percent fall in total GDP in 1998 - and instability was triggered by the dramatic fall in the value of the Rupiah and massive capital flight in the first quarter of 1998. As political unrest increased, culminating in the downfall of Soeharto in May 1998, the entire economy was paralyzed by the collapse of the Rupiah. Indonesia had her lost economic stability, so prized by the Soeharto government (Soesastro & Basri, 1998; Manning, 2000). The social impact of the economic crisis has been severe. Indonesian families were adversely affected by the twin effects of a sharp cutback in labor demand and a high rate of inflation through 1998. By early 1999, an estimated half a million people had lost their jobs in advanced industries and the service sector, and probably at least a million more in small scale
58
MinHo Yeom, Clementina Acedo, and Erry Utomo
industry and trade. In all, this amounted to a loss of around 5 percent of total non-agricultural wage employment and closer to a 10-15 percent loss of total employment in industry and trade. Real wages declined by around 30-50 percent in the same year, as nominal wage growth lagged far behind the increase in consumer prices (Manning, 2000). Struggling to minimize the social effects of the economic crisis, the government has placed particular emphasis on the welfare of children and women, who are most vulnerable to significant declines in household income, high rates of inflation and a sudden fall in government spending. In education, the main concern has been regarding students dropping out from junior secondary school as a result of the crisis. The government sought to protect the education budget from the effects of inflation by maintaining expenditure in real terms in 1998/99 (Manning, 2000).
The Indonesian Education System and Basic Education Expansion The Indonesian education system recognizes two different paths of education: school based education and out-of school education. Currently, Indonesia basically adopts a 6-3-3-4 school based education system, which consists of 6 years of primary, 3 years of junior secondary, 3 years of senior secondary, and 4 years of tertiary education (see Table 1). In 1994, a system of Nine-Years Basic Education was declared universal with an ambitious target that all children aged 7-15 years will receive a basic education by 2004. Basic education consists of primary and junior secondary school education. Senior secondary schooling consists of 2 streams: general and technical/vocational (Ministry of National Education, 2000b; Southeast Asian Ministry of Education Organization, 1999; UNESCO, 2000a). Concerning equity in educational opportunity, Indonesia has made great strides in basic education expansion over the last three decades. At the beginning of the fourth period of the Five Year Development program (1984) the Indonesian Government implemented a plan of Six-Years Compulsory Education for primary
school age children (7-12 years). The result of this new policy was significant as the participation rate at the primary level increased to 92.16 percent in 1993 compared to 79.3 percent in 1983. With this great achievement of enrollment rates at the primary level, the compulsory level was extended in 1994 to age 15, through junior secondary school. The policy has been recognized as Wajar Dikdas (Compulsory Nine Years Basic Education). The compulsory nine-years of basic education is meant to give ample opportunities for Indonesian citizens to receive a basic education. The extension from six years to nine years of basic education is also intended to alleviate the problem of child labor and to keep children in school until they reach the level of education at which they are able to keep up with the changing demands of their society, especially for those who cannot afford to pursue higher levels of education. One of the implications of basic educational expansion at that time was the provision of educational opportunities for about six million children at the basic education age who until then did not have the opportunity for further study (Ministry of National Education, 2000b; 2000c). Regarding educational provision, as presented in Figure 1, student enrollments have increased drastically in the past three decades due to the educational policy, 2 focusing on the provision of basic education for all. As 3 a result, the gross enrollment ratio of primary school jumped from 80.0 percent in 1970 to 112.7 percent in 4 1996. The gross enrolment ratio of junior secondary schools jumped from 17 percent in 1973 to 73 percent in 1997/98, while that of senior secondary schools jumped from 9 percent in 1973 to 39 percent in 1997/98. This is a great improvement considering the very low level of access to secondary education between 1970 and 1985. From 1985 to 1995 Indonesia reached the level of enrollment of other Asian Countries. (See Table 2; Ministry of Education and Culture, 1999; Ministry of National Education, 2000a; National Development Planning Agency, 2000).
Secondary education reform efforts in the 1990s can be largely classified into three categories according to both the main actors and funding agencies. Besides the
The Reform of Secondary Education in Indonesia
Table 1. Education System in Indonesia
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59
60
MinHo Yeom, Clementina Acedo, and Erry Utomo
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