MANY critics of the Indonesian education system point to unqualified teachers and rampant cheating in national examinations. Less widely acknowledged, however, is the fact that many students do not even feel safe in their own classrooms.
On Oct 4, Mira Yuniar, a 12th-grader studying at a government school in Depok, West Java, was injured when the roof above a second-floor corridor suddenly collapsed. Reports said that the incident occurred at about 6.45am after iron supports holding up parts of the roof of the recently completed building came loose. Mira was hit by falling debris as she walked into her classroom. Fortunately, her injuries were not serious.
Such incidents are common in Indonesia. In June, the roof of an elementary school in Jatinegara, East Jakarta, collapsed soon after renovations were completed. Thankfully, no students were injured in that incident, which happened around midnight.
Other schools have not been so lucky. Last November, more than a dozen primary school pupils and food hawkers were hospitalised after a building being used as a canteen collapsed at a school in West Bekasi.
And in another incident in June last year, 22 students were injured, some seriously, when the roof of a classroom collapsed during a science class at a junior high school in Cilacap, Central Java.
Some incidents, such as the ones in Depok and Jatinegara, appear to have been caused by shoddy workmanship. In Mira’s school, the principal also acknowledged that the contractor had been appointed without a formal tender process.
The majority of cases, however, are the result of poor maintenance. In September last year, Deputy Education Minister Fasli Jalal revealed that 182,500 of the nation’s state and private elementary school classrooms (20.3 per cent of the total) had moderate damage, while another 110,598 (12.3 per cent) were heavily damaged.
The situation, he said, was similar in many junior high schools. In this case, 82,892 classrooms (27.8 per cent of the total) suffered from moderate damage, while 42,428 (14.2 per cent) required extensive repairs.
On the surface, such a situation seems hard to understand. After all, the Indonesian Constitution requires that 20 per cent of the state budget be spent on education and this requirement is regularly met.
Some regional administrations go further. Last year, for example, Jakarta Governor Fauzi Bowo proposed spending 10.4 trillion rupiah (S$1.35 billion) on education, an amount equal to almost 31 per cent of the total city budget.
Yet despite repeated appeals from principals, teachers and parents, funds for the repair of heavily damaged school buildings typically take years to arrive.
One of the reasons, of course, is bureaucratic red tape. For example, officials say that emergency funding for repairs for any given year cannot normally be used for damage reported outside that period. At other times, when the money is available, local bureaucrats are reluctant to release it because technical guidelines on its use have not been issued.
More important, however, is the politicking that ensures a somewhat unexpected distribution of resources. With so much cash up for grabs, many ministries have apparently found ways of getting a piece of the pie.
This year, for example, Indonesia’s education budget totalled a hefty 310.8 trillion rupiah. But the Education Ministry only got 66 trillion rupiah of it. The Religious Affairs Ministry (which overseas Islamic schools) received 39 trillion rupiah. The rest of the money (about 66 per cent) was shared out among 18 other ministries and government institutions that run their own training programmes.
Within the education system, this politicking extends right down to the district and sub-district levels, leading to a situation in which local decisions on school repairs are hardly equitable.
Mr Fasli told the Jakarta Post earlier this month: “It often depends on what electorate the schools are in and which schools lobby local legislators. It’s not fair but it happens quite often.”
Corruption is yet another factor, although its true extent is difficult to gauge. According to a survey by the government’s Supreme Audit Agency in 2007, six out of 10 schools (in a sample of 3,237) misused at least part of the funds allocated to them. The average amount involved, however, was fairly small – only 13.7 million rupiah per school.
As the recent incidents in Depok and Jatinegara suggest, far more substantial amounts are probably lost during renovation works, when local officials are induced to appoint contractors willing to cut corners.
Finally, there is the misallocation of resources arising from the tendency of education officials to focus on the purchase of unnecessary equipment such as answer sheet checking software and interactive information boards.
Such problems need to be sorted out as soon as possible.
It is unreasonable to expect students to focus on their studies when both they and their teachers also have to worry about whether the classrooms they are using are safe.
(C) Singapore Press Holdings Limited