Education in Indonesia - Public Primary and Secondary Education

Public Primary and Secondary Education

Indonesians are required to attend nine years of school. They can choose between state-run, nonsectarian public schools supervised by the Department of National Education (Depdiknas) or private or semiprivate religious (usually Islamic) schools supervised and financed by the Department of Religious Affairs. However, although 86.1 percent of the Indonesian population is registered as Muslim, according to the 2000 census only 15 percent of school-age individuals attended religious schools. Overall enrollment figures are slightly higher for girls than boys and much higher in Java than the rest of Indonesia.

A central goal of the national education system is not merely to impart secular wisdom about the world but also to instruct children in the principles of participation in the modern nation-state, its bureaucracies, and its moral and ideological foundations. Beginning under Guided Democracy (1959–65) and strengthened in the New Order after 1975, a key feature of the national curriculum—as was the case for other national institutions—has been instruction in the Pancasila. Children age six and older learned by rote its five principles—belief in one God, humanitarianism, national unity, democracy, and social justice—and were instructed daily to apply the meanings of this key national symbol to their lives. But with the end of the New Order in 1998 and the beginning of the campaign to decentralize the national government, provincial and district-level administrators obtained increasing autonomy in determining the content of schooling, and Pancasila began to play a diminishing role in the curriculum.

A style of pedagogy prevails inside public-school classrooms that emphasizes rote learning and deference to the authority of the teacher. Although the youngest children are sometimes allowed to use their local language, by the third year of primary school nearly all instruction is conducted in Indonesian. Teachers customarily do not ask questions of individual students; rather, a standard teaching technique is to narrate a historical event or to describe a mathematical problem, pausing at key junctures to allow the students to call out responses that "fill in the blanks". By not identifying individual problems of students and retaining an emotionally distanced demeanor, teachers are said to show themselves to be sabar (patient), which is considered admirable behavior.

Children aged 6–11 attend primary school, called Sekolah Dasar (SD). Most elementary schools are government-operated public schools, accounting for nearly 93% of all elementary schools in Indonesia. Students spend six years in primary school, though some schools offer an accelerated learning program in which students who perform well can complete the level in five years.

Three years of middle school (Sekolah Menengah Pertama, or SMP) follow elementary school.

After completion of the six-year primary-school program, three years of junior secondary school (Sekolah Menengah Pertama, or SMP) may be followed by three years of senior secondary school (Sekolah Menengah Atas or SMA.); or students can choose among a variety of vocational and pre-professional junior and senior secondary schools (Sekolah Menengah Kejuruan or SMK), each level of which requires three years of study. There are academic and vocational junior high schools that lead to senior-level diplomas. There are also "domestic science" junior high schools for girls. At the senior high school level, three-year agricultural, veterinary, and forestry schools are open to students who have graduated from an academic junior high school. Special schools at the junior and senior levels teach hotel management, legal clerking, plastic arts, and music.

Students with disabilities/special needs may alternately opt to be enrolled in a separate school from the mainstream called Sekolah Luar Biasa (lit. Extraordinary School).

The completion rate for Indonesian primary schools is high. Indeed, 100 percent of the relevant age-group had completed primary education as of 2003. The gross enrollment rate for primary schools was 100 percent, but it decreased to 62 percent for secondary schools and 16 percent for postsecondary schools. There were nearly equal numbers of girls and boys in primary and secondary schools; in the late 2000s, the ratio was 96.7 girls to 100 boys. Depdiknas reported that in school year 2007–8 there were 63,444 kindergartens, with a total enrollment of 2.8 million pupils and 176,061 teachers. Later statistics are available for primary and secondary levels for school year 2008–9. They indicate that there were 144,228 primary schools, with a total enrollment of 26.9 million students and 1.5 million teachers; 28,777 junior secondary schools, with a total enrollment of 8.9 million students and 629,036 teachers; 10,762 general senior secondary schools, with a total enrollment of 3.8 million students and 314,389 teachers; and 7,592 vocational senior secondary schools, with a total enrollment of 3 million students and 246,018 teachers. Additionally, there were 1,686 special education schools from kindergarten to senior secondary levels, with a total enrollment of 73,322 and 18,047 teachers.

Teacher-training programs are varied and gradually being upgraded. For example, in the 1950s anyone completing a teacher-training program at the junior high school level could obtain a teacher’s certificate. Since the 1970s, however, primary-school teachers have been required to have graduated from a senior high school for teachers, and teachers of higher grades have been required to have completed a university-level education course. Remuneration for primary- and secondary-school teachers, although low, compares favorably with that in other Asian countries such as Malaysia, India, and Thailand. Student–teacher ratios also compare satisfactorily with those in many Asian nations: They were 23.4 to 1 and 18.8 to 1, respectively, for primary and secondary schools in 2004; that same year, the overall averages for Asia-Pacific countries were 22 to 1 and 18 to 1, respectively.

By 2008 the staff shortage in Indonesia's schools was no longer as acute as in the 1980s, but serious difficulties remain, particularly in the areas of teacher salaries, teacher certification, and finding qualified personnel. In many remote areas of the Outer Islands, in particular, there is a severe shortage of qualified teachers, and some villages have school buildings but no teachers, books, or supplies. Providing textbooks and other school equipment to Indonesia’s 37 million schoolchildren throughout the far-flung archipelago continues to be a significant problem as well, especially in more remote areas.