SHORT MINISTER INTERVENTION E9 MEETING

Brief Statement

Prof.Dr.Bambang Sudibyo, MA

Minister of National Education, Indonesia

Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen,

Coming from the yesterday meeting of expert, my intervention will not repeat the country presentation delivered yesterday, and I today will primarily focus on policies, the relevant managerial, and financial implications, and at the end, I would like to touch some of the actions that could be considered for future cooperation among E9 countries and beyond in the area of teachers' training and the use of ICT.

The Indonesian government has developed policies that will address 5 strategic areas, namely (1) for providing well qualified teachers to all schools, (2) upgrading teacher's qualification up to or equivalent to 4-year bachelor degree, (3) establishing teacher's certification through port-folio evaluation method for in-service teachers and through 1 year formal post bachelor education for pre-service teachers, (4) improving teachers' salary through doubling teacher's income by providing functional allowance, professional allowance, and special allowance, and finally (5) applying ICT based ODL for upgrading quality of teachers. These policies have brought serious implications the managerial as well as the financing of these policies.

Because of the nature of Indonesian geography, the current government's commitment to decentralize most of its authority to provincial and district levels, also because of the magnitude of the teachers, at least five managerial consequences need some attentions such as (1) Redistribution of teachers which is now tend to concentrate in cities rather than in regions, islands, and remote areas within the context of decentralized government. (2) Re-education of 1.7 million teachers with education of less than 4-year bachelor to obtain their 4-year bachelor degree. (3) Certification of the existing 2.7 million teachers. (4) Increasing budget appropriation for this 2.7 million teachers (salary and other incentives). (5). Installing ICT infrastructure for more than 300,000 schools to provide e-learning and e-administration for the 2.7 million teachers and 48 million students, and applying ICT based ODL for teachers and students in remote places.

The managerial implications of these programs has brought along the financial implications. The budget required to improve the management for redistribution, re-education, certifications, and ICT installation will be around 9.5 trillion. To bring up the improvement of incentive system must be done by harmonizing teacher deployment policies across provinces and districts governments. In this case Indonesia needs 76 trillion rupiah for salary improvement. The large budget demand could only be met through burden sharing between national, provincial, and district government. In addition to this, knowing the amount needed for improving teachers' salary and knowing how to share the budget at various government levels, then we need also to control the teacher training at higher education institutions. It is not an easy task for the ministry of education because we are also facing very tough competition with other top priority Ministries such as Ministry of Defense, Ministry of Public Works, Ministry of Health, and Ministry of Transportation and Communication. No mention that we also have to convince the President and in particular the Parliament who has ultimate authority over budget appropriation. I will illustrate the budget appropriation for Ministry of National Education in the last 5 years from 2004 until 2008 are 19.4 trillion in 2004, 26.1 trillion in 2005, 40.2 trillion in 2006, 44.0 trillion in 2007, and 49.7 trillion rupiah in 2008. In the last 4 years budget for Ministry of National Education has been increased by approximately 2,5 times.

There are some remaining challenges in implementing these policies due to the above mentioned constraints regarding financial and managerial implications. For example how can we accelerate the achievement of teachers' training that meet the standard and shorten the current time frame so we could accomplish the target within the time frame given in EFA goals? In the case of teacher certification and teacher holding a 4-year bachelor degree we need 10 years to finish the program.

I have revealed issues related to teacher education in Indonesia in ensuring the quantity and quality of teachers. These issues provide comprehensive, integrated and successful stories of the total reform of teacher management and development which at the later stages are assumed to be potential resource sharing of best practices and as lessons-learnt to other E-9 countries. On the other hand, some issues may remain as challenges for Indonesia which will demand the assistance and collaboration from other E-9 countries. There are several areas that can be explored for these collaboration modalities, such as: Cooperation for teacher pre service and in-service training, sharing for implementation of holistic teacher's reform process, sharing in utilizing ICT as the mean to conduct teacher's training, sharing the development of standards, standard based national exam, standard based accreditation as well as recognition of degree and diploma in teacher higher education, and finally sharing some of the best practices that needed by some of E 9 countries, including teacher training for madrasah. In addition, Indonesia is willing to prioritize the one-year non degree Dharma Siswa scholarship and the three-year degree South-South scholarship for ASEAN/SEAMEO member countries and the E9 member countries.

Finally, let me finish by saying again that all these efforts required substantial financial resources, therefore I would strongly urge through UNESCO that special effort must be done to encourage participation and support from donor countries and international funding agencies to improve the quality of teachers and using all possible means of cooperation and partnership to materialize this under current cooperation umbrella such as South-South and South-South North Cooperation.