INDONESIA

Education: The sums don’t add up

THE United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Education visited Indonesia from 1 to 7 July, 2002. As stated in her report, she had intended for her visit to last for two weeks but, due to budget cuts in the UN, was forced to halve the time planned for Indonesia.  The report notes that this limited the depth with which she could cover the issues and shortened the length of the report overall. Given the recent fanfare about the 10th anniversary of the Vienna Declaration and Program of Action, it is ironic and unfortunate that a report on one of the most significant economic and social rights in Indonesia - a nation currently beset by massive fiscal problems - should be so limited due to lack of UN funding for human rights.

The Special Rapporteur evaluated the Indonesian education system according to her "4-A" scheme: availability, accessibility, acceptability, and adaptability. This scheme was outlined and developed in her annual reports from 1999-2001 and provides a means of analysing both the "vertical" and "horizontal" aspects of the human rights obligations to education. 

The first section of the report, which analyses the availability of education in Indonesia, depicts limited gains through legislation and planning. Although the 1945 Constitution stated that every Indonesian citizen has a right to education, it did not outline corresponding governmental obligations. After oil was discovered in 1973 the Indonesian Government built standardised schools throughout the country. The 1999 Law on Human Rights reiterates that "every child has the right to access to education and schooling as befits his interests, talents and intellectual capacity." However, due to the shortage of spaces in public schools, many children are forced to look to private institutions. The report estimates that 20-25 per cent of children are educated in religious, primarily madrasa, schools. 

In February 2001 the Ministry of National Education started drafting new legislation on education. Although the draft legislation states that the central and local government shall "have to ensure the availability of funds for the implementation of education for every Indonesian citizen from ages seven to fifteen," communities will have to provide resources for education and all students are required to pay fees. The Special Rapporteur's report notes: "Such provisions do not bode well for the clarity of the law…This may perpetuate the current situation where school fees are both  outlawed and allowed, while the cost of education, albeit considerable, is unknown. It is the children who are the principal victims of financial obstacles that impede their education." 

In describing the availability of teachers, the report notes that Indonesian students suffer greatly from a lack of qualified and committed teachers. "[T]eaching is today a low-paid and low-prestige profession," the report notes. Eighty per cent of teachers have parallel jobs, a situation which is facilitated by the teaching time of 2.5 daily and 15 weekly hours.

The Special Rapporteur's section on accessibility shows that education is sub-standard in Indonesia. The education system in Indonesia has also failed to meet standards of "adaptability." (see box below: Not up to the mark)

However, in 2001 the Ministry of Education developed a plan aimed at reforming Indonesia's education system to better reflect the needs of students and their diverse communities. The Ministry's director of history explained, "History is no longer about justification of the fact. It should generate dialogue to allow different interpretations. We want to educate the public that different versions in history are normal."  The Special Rapporteur's report argues that the process of transforming the educational system can be enhanced through focusing on two key aspects: (1) the role of education in peace-making and peace-sustaining, and (2) the link between education and poverty reduction.

The 2002 Mission to Indonesia Report argues that education can be used to the benefit of government policy that is accountable to Indonesia's diverse population. However, the Special Rapporteur notes that one of the greatest challenges facing the government will be to create a system that addresses disparities and social issues caused by the current economic crisis. "This requires links between human rights and economic governance," she writes, "a look back into the economic underpinning of unequal development and a look forward towards rights-based development."  

The report's analysis of availability further describes the impact poverty has had on education in Indonesia. It states that most children who start schooling drop out, citing as evidence the shift from a "surplus" of students for primary schools to a "deficit" of students for junior secondary schools. Indonesia lacks statistics that allow for definitive conclusions about this trend. However, the report notes that cost, in conjunction with poverty, is clearly one of the major factors that prevents children from receiving a proper education. Other obstacles include the distance from the closest school, incompatibility between the school schedule and the schedules of working children, and a gap between the spoken language and reality in homes and the language and content of instruction found in schools.

The Special Rapporteur notes with concern that the draft education law does not contain any provision regarding discrimination. For example, the drafters rejected a proposal to include the right for children with disabilities to receive education on par with that of able-bodied students. "Very few pupils with special needs attend regular schools," the report states. Equally problematic is de-facto discrimination that results from requiring students to pay a fee for education. The report recommends that "elimination of discrimination especially in conjunction with the elimination of poverty, be accorded priority in the debate on and drafting of the forthcoming law…."

In this respect the Special Rapporteur's work in Indonesia complements other assessments of the affect of poverty on students in Indonesia. For example, a 2001 policy and research paper by the World Bank, entitled Poverty, Education, and Health in Indonesia: Who Benefits from Public Spending, highlights the importance of providing low-cost education to Indonesia's poor. The study found that the poor are extremely price sensitive and that any reduction in education subsidies quickly makes education unaffordable.  The authors of the report note, "if the poor are more price sensitive than the nonpoor, then reducing subsidies will lead to greater inequality in access to education and health services."  "[A]bsent intervention to guarantee access to education and health services," they conclude, "there would likely be serious inequalities in education…outcomes." 

Furthermore, studies indicate that although the poor are the primary recipients of subsidies for primary schooling, by the time students are in senior secondary school the total amount of money transferred to the richest quintile is more than triple that received by households in the poorest quintile.  Current economies of scale in consumption lead to the conclusion that current government spending on education is not "pro-poor."  "[E]vidence seems to suggest," the authors write, "that the poor have not been the principal beneficiaries of public spending."   Taking note of the severe budgetary constraints currently facing the Indonesian government, the World Bank report suggests implementing targeted price subsidies or adopting a regionally focused policy of providing funding for education.     

In turn, according to the 2001 Annual Report of the Special Rapporteur on the Right to Education, 44.5 per cent of all cases filed with the Indonesian Human Rights Commission in 2000 were classified as violations of the "right to welfare."  Complaints regarding the right to education included most notably the high cost of education and the non-implementation of laws.  Together with the Special Rapporteur's most recent report, these and other documents suggest that one of the greatest barriers to the right to education in Indonesia is the prohibitively high cost of sending children to school.

The Special Rapporteur's report makes four recommendations for reforming Indonesia's education system.  First, the government must develop and adopt a rights-based education strategy.  Second, it must create cross-sectoral links with poverty eradication and conflict prevention.  Third, it must clarify its human rights obligations.  Lastly, the government must strive to eliminate financial obstacles to education.

This last recommendation is perhaps the most important yet the most difficult to implement. There is clear evidence of positive steps: in 2000, Indonesia's nine percent budget allocation for education was the lowest in the Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN); yet one year later President Megawati announced that the largest share ever, 24.7 per cent, would be allocated for education.   Then, in August 2002 a constitutional amendment mandating a 20 per cent budgetary allocation for education was adopted. 

Yet Indonesia's low tax effort will keep this amount well below UNESCO's recommendation of six per cent of GDP for education.  So-called "KKN"-corruption, collusion and nepotism-still prevail throughout the country and work to the detriment of education. Two weeks after the Special Rapporteur's visit, The Guardian ran a story titled "r u ready to cheat?" that detailed the rampant corruption that accompanies students' admissions to public universities. The UNICEF representative for Indonesia and Malaysia has stated that Indonesia will suffer from a "lost generation" if it does not reform education, health care, and the economy. 

Given current fiscal constraints, it appears that careful allocation of funding such as those recommended by the World Bank report may be Indonesia's most realistic option. The Special Rapporteur, in turn, has committed herself to "facilitate follow-up [to the report] in every way that she can." One can only hope that further UN budget cuts for the Special Rapporteur's work do not create another obstacle for the reformation of Indonesia's struggling education system.