Education in Indonesia
Education in Indonesia falls under the responsibility of the Ministry of Education and Culture and the Ministry of Religious Affairs. In Indonesia, all citizens must undertake twelve years of compulsory education which consists of six years at elementary level and three each at middle and high school levels. Islamic schools are under the responsibility of the Ministry of Religious Affairs.
Education is defined as a planned effort to establish a study environment and educational process so that the student may actively develop his/her own potential in religious and spiritual level, consciousness, personality, intelligence, behaviour and creativity to him/herself, other citizens and the nation. The Constitution also notes that there are two types of education in Indonesia: formal and non-formal. Formal education is further divided into three levels: primary, secondary and tertiary education.
Schools in Indonesia are run either by the government or private sectors. Some private schools refer to themselves as "national plus schools" which means that their curriculum exceeds requirements set by the Ministry of Education, especially with the use of English as medium of instruction or having an international-based curriculum instead of the national one. In Indonesia there are approximately 170,000 primary schools, 40,000 junior-secondary schools and 26,000 high schools. 84 percent of these schools are under the Ministry of Education and Culture and the remaining 16 percent under the Ministry of Religious Affairs.
History
Era of Islamic states
The emergence of Islamic state in Indonesia is noted by the acculturation of Islamic and Hindu-Buddhist traditions. At this time, pondok pesantren, a type of Islamic boarding school was introduced and several of them were established. The location of pesantren is mostly faraway from the hustling crowd of the city, resembling the location of Karsyan.Colonial era
Elementary education was introduced by the Dutch in Indonesia during the colonial era. The Dutch education system are Query strings of educational branches that were based on social status of the colony's population, with the best available institution reserved for the European population.In 1870, with the growth of Dutch Ethical Policy formulated by Conrad Theodor van Deventer, some of these Dutch-founded schools opened the doors for pribumi. They were called Sekolah Rakjat, the embryo of what is called Sekolah Dasar today. In 1871 the Dutch parliament adopted a new education law that sought to uniform the highly scattered and diversified indigenous education systems across the archipelago, and expand the number of teacher training schools under the supervision of the colonial administration. The budget for public schooling was raised in steps from ca. 300,000 guilders in 1864 to roughly 3 million guilders by the early 1890s. Most often, however, the education development were starved of funding, because many Dutch politicians feared expanding education would eventually lead to anti-colonial sentiment. Funding for education only counted for 6% of the total expenditure of the colonial budget in the 1920s. The number of government and private primary schools for natives had increased to 3,108 and the libraries to 3,000 by 1930. However, spending sharply declined after the economic depression in 1930.
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The Dutch introduced a system of formal education for the local population of Indonesia, although this was restricted to certain privileged children. The schools for the European were modeled after the education system in Netherlands itself and required proficiency in Dutch. The Dutch language was also needed for higher education enrollment. The elite native/Chinese population who lack Dutch language skills could enroll in either Dutch Native or Chinese schools. The schools were arranged in the following levels:
- ELS - Primary School for Europeans
- HSS
- HIS - Primary School for Natives
- HCS - Primary School for Chinese
- MULO - Middle School
- AMS - High School or College
- HBS - Pre-University
in Bogor.
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For the population in rural areas, the Dutch created the Desa Schools or village schools system which aimed to spread literacy among the native population. These schools provide two or three years training of vernacular subjects and served as cheaper alternative schools. These village schools, however, received much less funding than the privileged European schools, thus the quality of education provided is often lacking. Despite of its flaws, the number of Village Schools reached 17,695 by 1930. The rest of the rural education were left to the work of Christian missionary, which are considered more cost-efficient.
The segregation between Dutch and Indonesian in education pushed several Indonesian figures to start educational institutions for local people. Arab Indonesians founded Jamiat Kheir in 1905, Ahmad Dahlan founded Muhammadiyah in November 1912, and Ki Hajar Dewantara founded Taman Siswa in July 1922 to emancipate the native population. Pesantrens were also mushrooming rapidly during this period.
During the colonial period there was a large gap between the educated male and female population. In 1920, on the island of Java and Madura out of the 6.5% literate male population, only 0.5% of the female native population are literate. Similar phenomenon can be observed on the 'Foreign Orientals', with 26.5% literate male population and only 8.5% literate females out of the total population. In the outer islands beyond Java the difference between literate male and female population are 12% and 3% out of the population respectively. Inspired by a Javanese-born aristocrat Kartini who died young at the age of 25, the Van Deventer family worked to increase female involvement in education and received support from the Dutch government — eventually leading to foundation of Kartini Schools in 1911.
The Dutch colonial government established universities and colleges for native Indonesian on the island of Java. Before founding the Bandung Institute of Technology in 1920, there was no university-level education in the country; students had to go abroad to receive it. Most of these universities have become the country's top educational institution as of today. These institutions are as follow:
- School tot Opleiding van Inlandsche Artsen or STOVIA, a medical university which later become Geneeskundige Hogeschool in Batavia.
- Nederland-Indische Artsen School or NIAS, a medical school in Soerabaja.
- Rechts-Hoge-School, a law school in Weltevreden, Batavia.
- De Technische Hoge-School, or THS, a technic school in Bandoeng and the first full-fledge university in the country .
- Middelbare Landbouw-school, an agriculture college which later become Landbouwkundige Faculteit in Buitenzorg
- Opleiding-School voor Inlandsche Ambtenaren or OSVIA, colleges for training native civil servants.
- Hollandsche-Indische Kweek-school, colleges for training teachers.
Japanese occupation
During the Japanese occupation in World War II, the operations of the Dutch education system were consolidated into a single operation that parallel the Japanese education system. The Japanese occupation marked the deterioration of education in Indonesia, as schools were organized with the goal of creating Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere of influence. As a result, schools began training in military and physical drill that were anti-West oriented. It included indoctrination of Japanese culture and history. Students were required to raise the Japanese flag and bow to the Emperor every morning. The Japanese made schools less stratified; despite this, enrollment had shrunk by 30% for primary education and 90% for secondary education by 1945.Post Independence
Under the Japanese and Dutch occupation, most of the educational institutions were created to support the needs of the occupying power. There were very few efforts to promote the intellectual advancement of the indigenous population. After Indonesia declared its independence in 1945, the surviving education system was fragile and unorganized. In addition there was a shortage of teachers, as most of them had been Dutch or Japanese. Very few Indonesians had experience in managing schools.Eager to address the neglect of focused education on native population, the first government of Indonesia had to create a system from scratch and reject the colonial European system. An Act declared in the 1945 constitution as Chapter 8, article 131, clause 1 that "every citizen has the right for education". The Ministry of Education, Instruction and Culture was founded with its first minister, Soewandi. The new institution sought to create an education that is anti-discriminatory, -elitist and -capitalist to promote nationalism of the new republic of Indonesia. It was also decided that religion deserved a proper place and attention under the new republic, resulting in an increased support for Pesantren and Islamic Madrasah.
Early education
Pre-school education in Indonesia is covered under PAUD that covers Taman Bermain and Taman Kanak-Kanak. PAUD is under direct supervision and coverage of Directorate of Early Age Education Development.From the age of 2, parents send their children to Taman Bermain. From the age of 4, they attend Taman Kanak-Kanak. Most TKs arrange the classes into two grades: A and B, which are informally called kelas nol kecil and kelas nol besar respectively. While this level of education is not compulsory, it is aimed to prepare children for primary schooling. Of the 49,000 kindergartens in Indonesia, 99.35% are privately operated. The kindergarten years are usually divided into "Class A" and "Class B" with students spending a year in each class.
Public primary and secondary education
Indonesians are required to attend 12 years of school. They must go to school six days a week from 6:30 a.m. until afternoon. They can choose between state-run, nonsectarian public schools supervised by the Ministry of National Education or private or semi-private religious schools supervised and financed by the Ministry of Religious Affairs. Students can choose to participate in extracurricular activities provided by the school such as sports, arts, or religious studies. 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 to impart secular wisdom about the world and 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 and strengthened in the New Order after 1975, a key feature of the national curriculum — 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 decentralise 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 emphasises 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 patient, which is considered admirable.
Children ages 6–12 attend primary school, called Sekolah Dasar. As of 2014, most elementary schools are government-operated public schools, accounting for 90.29% 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 junior high school follows elementary school. Some schools offer an accelerated learning program in which students who perform well can complete the level in two years.
There are academic and vocational junior high schools that lead to senior-level diplomas. There are also "domestic science" junior high schools for girls.
After completion, they may be attend three years of high school. Some high schools offer an accelerated learning program so students who perform well can complete their level in two years. Besides high school, students can choose among 47 programmes of vocational and pre-professional high school, divided in the following fields: technology and engineering, health, arts, craft and tourism, information and communication technologies, agro-business and agro-technology, business management. Each requires three years of study. 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 opt to be enrolled in a separate school from the mainstream called Sekolah Luar Biasa.
The Indonesian education system is the fourth largest in the world with more than 50 million students, 3 million teachers, 300,000 schools. Primary to high school level is compulsory. Primary and middle school is free, while in high school, there are small fees. The completion rate for Indonesian primary schools is high. In 2011, the net enrollment rate for primary education is about 95.55%, but the enrollment rate is decreasing for middle school to 77.71% and for high school to 57.74%. While the tertiary-education participation is even lower – about 27.1% – this number is still quite high compared to other ASEAN member states. For the same year, the survival rate for primary, middle, and high school as the following numbers: 95.3%, 97.68%, and 96.8%. The higher the percentage of survival rate means that fewer students at certain education level who drop out. Although the Indonesian government has achieved significant improvement in education sector, there are still many challenges that should be addressed, including funding, management, equity, and education quality.
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 favourably with that in other Asian countries such as Malaysia, India, and Thailand. Student–teacher ratios 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.
School grades
The school year is divided into two semesters. The first commences in July and ends in December while the latter commences in January and ends in June.2013 Curriculum
;Specialization groups| # | Natural sciences | Social sciences | Language and literature | Total hour |
| 1 | Mathematics | History | Indonesian language | 4 |
| 2 | Physics | Geography | English language | 4 |
| 3 | Biology | Economics | Traditional/Local language | 4 |
| 4 | Chemistry | Sociology | Foreign language | 4 |
Islamic schools
There are three types of Islamic schools in Indonesia, pesantrens, madrasah, and sekolah Islamic schools. Pesantrens can be small with just a few teachers and students to quite large with dozens of teachers and hundreds of students. Pesantrens are led by hereditary kiais, who lead the school and have religious authority.Madrasahs vary in their ideological foundations and vary in the provision of secular and religious content.Sekolah Islamic schools use the MoEC's secular curriculum and add their own Islamic curricula.The secular and nationalist emphasis in public schools has been resisted by some of the Muslim majority. A distinct and vocal minority of these Muslims prefer to place their children in a pesantren or Islamic school. Usually found in rural areas and directed by a Muslim scholar, pesantren are attended by young people seeking a detailed understanding of the Quran, the Arabic language, sharia, and Muslim traditions and history, as well as more modern subjects such as English, mathematics, and geography. Students can enter and leave the pesantren any time of the year, and the studies are not organised as a progression of courses leading to graduation.
Although the chief aim of pesantren is to produce good Muslims, they do not share a single stance toward Islam or a position on secularism. Some pesantren emphasise the autonomy of modern students to think for themselves and to interpret scripture and modern knowledge in a way that is consistent with the teachings of Islam. Others are more traditional and stress the importance of following the wisdom of elders, including their teachings on science, religion, and family life. Although the terrorist bombings in Kuta, Bali, in 2002 raised suspicions about whether pesantren promote extremist views, the majority of these schools in Indonesia are theologically moderate, reflecting the views of the Indonesian population as a whole. For those who opt for a pesantren education, a sixth-grade equivalency certificate is available after successful completion of a state test.
For students to adapt to life in the modern nation-state, in the 1970s the Muslim-dominated Department of Religion advocated the spread of a newer variety of Muslim school: the madrassa. This kind of school integrates religious subjects from the pesantren with secular subjects from the Western-style public-education system. Although in general the public believes that Islamic schools offer lower-quality education, among Islamic schools a madrassa is ranked lower than a pesantren.
Madrasah Ibtidaiyah is the Islamic schooling alternative to SD, following a curriculum with more focus on Arabic and Islam. Madrasah Tsanawiyah is the Islamic schooling equivalent of SMP. Madrasah Aliyah is the Islamic schooling equivalent of SMA while Madrasah Aliyah Kejuruan is the equivalent of SMK.
Higher education
The higher education institution is categorised into two types: public and private. Both are supervised by the Ministry of Research, Technology and Higher Education. There are four types of higher education institution: universities, institutes, academies, and polytechnics.Indonesia's institutions of higher education have experienced dramatic growth since independence. In 1950 there were 10 institutions of higher learning with a total of about 6,500 students. In 1970, 450 private and state institutions enrolled about 237,000 students. By 1990 there were 900 institutions with about 141,000 teachers and nearly 1.5 million students. By 2009 there were 2,975 institutions of higher education and more than 4.2 million students. Of these institutions, 3 percent were public, with 57.1 percent of the student enrolment, and 97 percent were private, with 42.9 of the student enrolment. Entry to state universities depends on the nationwide entrance examination. Even though government subsidies finance approximately 80 to 90 percent of state-university budgets, universities have considerably more autonomy in curriculum and internal structure than do primary and secondary schools. Whereas, tuition in such state institutions is more affordable than private-university tuition, enabling attendance by students from relatively modest backgrounds, faculty salaries are low by international standards. Lecturers often have other jobs outside the university to supplement their wages.
Private universities are generally operated by foundations. Unlike state universities, private institutions have budgets that are almost entirely tuition-driven. A onetime registration fee is determined at the time of entry. Universities with a religious affiliation may receive donations or grants from religious organisations. The government provides only limited scholarship support for students wishing to attend private universities.
Most of the 6,000 foreign students studying in Indonesian universities hail from Malaysia. In particular, they are in the fields of medicine, pharmacy, literature, humanities, Islamic studies, and engineering. The majority are sponsored by the Malaysian government. These students are dispersed across Indonesia in almost all public universities such as Universitas Sumatera Utara, Universitas Indonesia, Gadjah Mada University, Bandung Institute of Technology and in private institutions such as Universitas Kristen Krida Wacana.