Anita Rachman

Mohammad Nuh has pledged to increase the quality of Indonesia's graduates. (Photo: Yudhi Sukma Wijaya, JG)

Education Minister Vows to Retune Indonesia's Schools

The new minister of national education, Mohammad Nuh, has defined four pillars around which his approach to improving Indonesia’s education standards will be built.

The four pillars, Nuh said, are adequate facilities, affordable fees, quality schools and teachers, and guaranteed graduation standards.

Speaking last week after being officially installed in his new post, Nuh said the bottom line for education was to ensure quality graduates.

He compared schools to car companies. Cars, if released into the marketplace and found to be inadequate, can be taken off the market, refitted and re-engineered before being returned for sale. Students, however, once they have failed in the job market, cannot just be sent back to school to be fixed.

Nuh said the education system had to get it right the first time.

The new minister said he could not elaborate on how he expected his term to unfold at this early stage.

“I can’t give you the finer points of my first 100-day programs now, but I will outline our plans in more detail on Wednesday or Thursday,” Nuh said on Monday. “I can say now that finishing programs that were started in 2009 will be one of the ministry’s earliest tasks.”

Nuh did, however, promise that in 2010 there would be no news reports about school buildings collapsing. “Stories [about collapsed buildings] have come to an end.”

Ade Irawan, a public service monitoring coordinator with Indonesia Corruption Watch, said that the minister should be clear in setting the agenda for his first 100 days at the ministry.

“I think Nuh’s appointment has received a positive response from the public,” he said. “But still, the most important thing is to outline his agenda for fixing our national education system.”

Education experts and activists have long criticized some of the ministry’s policies, including the national exams, which have been marred by rampant cheating, often involving teachers and school administrators.

Another contentious issue has been the autonomy law, which gives tertiary education institutions the freedom to set their own regulations and fees, leading to fears that universities will become commercialized and expensive.

The ICW has also pointed to corruption issues that the ministry had yet to resolve, especially those related to school fees.

Bambang Sudibyo, who served as national education minister from 2004-9, said during Nuh’s inauguration ceremony that his administration had done much to achieve a standardized educational policy through its five-year national education strategic plan.

“By the end of 2009, almost all key indicators in our strategic plans will have been achieved,” Bambang said. “Most important, the ministry was able to get funding of 20 percent of the state budget, as stipulated in the 1945 Constitution.”

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