A snapshot from the World Bank team about the complexities of teacher reform in Indonesia after Teacher Law 2005 was passed.

1. The History of
Teacher Reform in
Indonesia
Source: Teacher Reform in Indonesia: The Role of Politics
and Evidence in Policymaking (The World Bank, 2014)
Link: http://www-wds.worldbank.org/external/default/WDSContentServer/WDSP/IB/
2013/12/05/000442464_20131205130239/Rendered/PDF/
831520PUB0Teac00Box379886B00PUBLIC0.pdf
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2. Important markers
• 2002 Amendment to the Constitution, 20% of national
budget is allocated for education.
• The growing perception that teacher income and
teacher status are the main reasons for the poor
quality of teaching in Indonesian schools.
• This perception became the proposal in the Parliament
for government regulation/law to double teacher salary.
To avoid mixture with other government employees, it
is considered as “professional allowance.”
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3. • Directorate General for the Quality Improvement of Teachers
and Education Personnel was created.
• It developed a profile of Indonesia teachers. The profile
reinforced the views that, in general, teachers are badly paid,
poorly motivated, inequitably deployed, increasingly
disrespected by the communities they served, and with few
opportunities for further training.
• Thus, professional allowance should focus on both teacher
welfare and teacher quality, by requiring those who receive
allowance go through some process to be considered as
“professional.”
• Great support by the new Parliament, some of them were
former teachers, backed by by political parties that saw
teachers as important constituents and local opinion leaders.
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4. • Thus, these forces, the stakeholders:
- the government (the Ministry of National
Education, the Ministry of Finance, the National
Planning Board)
- the Parliament
- the political parties
- teacher associations
joined together and formed a consensus that led to
Teacher Law of 2005.
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5. Debates on
the Implementation Plan
• The government (the Ministry of National Education and the
National Education Standards Board) - focused on “teacher
quality,” arguing for the importance of the assessing teacher’s
core competencies through competency tests.
• Teacher associations focused on “teacher welfare” and
considered competency tests as assaults. They were backed up
by the Parliaments who refused to provide funds for competency
tests. Instead they proposed the idea of “portfolio assessment” as
competency tests.
• Portfolio as the compromise, but this was not strongly linked to
demonstrated competencies in either subject content or
pedagogical skill.
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6. Implementation Issues
• The new Directorate General: understaffed and
inexperienced.
• The reform: major, comprehensive, untested.
• The system: complex and inefficient bureaucracy.
• Decentralization: district officials and principals
had a sense of independence and reluctance to
listen to the mandates if there is no clear
incentives.
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7. • The management problem at district offices. No unit comparable to the
new directorate, thus handling teacher management & development in a
piecemeal and uncoordinated fashion.
• The integrity problem at district offices and schools. Regulations about
which teachers start the certification (senior teachers w/ 4-year degree)
are not followed, leading to corruption and favoritism allegations.
• Fictitious and falsified portfolio documentation.
• The shortage of assessors from teacher education institutions, thus, the
portfolios were not assessed seriously.
• Funding to teacher education institutions was delayed. 7-month initial
planning and implementation process was cut into 2 months. This
cancelled the plan for tailored-based training into standardized training,
inefficient training processes (e.g., 25 parallel classes into one’s
institutions, a large percentage of time allocated for breaks and admin
tasks), and almost 100% pass the training.
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8. Other early challenges
• Three years after the passing of the Teacher Law, the
Directorate General for Quality Improvement of Teachers
and Education Personnel was dismantled, and different
aspects of teacher development and management were
placed in different directorates and in a new Board for
Educational and Cultural Human Resources
Development and Quality Assurance for Education
• Why? To be more responsive in adapting strategies to
the particular needs of different regions, different
teachers - greater variety in content and options in the
90-hour course. This never took place.
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9. • Teachers with professional allowance was expected to use
it for continuing professional development. This rarely
happened.
• The requirement for every certified teacher to teach a
minimum of 24 hours (instead of 18 hours as preferred by
teacher institutions) was not easy to implement.
• Other parts of the reform focusing on quality were either
delayed, or not actively implemented at the district level.
These include: effective & merit-based procedures in
appointing school principals and supervisors, more
rigorous mechanisms for probation, induction, and teacher
appraisal. Thus, funds for teacher professional
development at the district level were often unspent.
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10. • Public and private school teachers. Public school teachers got more
priorities to start the certification process; thus, many teachers from best
private schools moved to public schools, even just as contract teachers, in
hope to get a post and to be certified.
• The doubts over the integrity of the portfolio content and the fairness of the
portfolio assessment procedures across teacher education institutions,
and about the efficacy of the 90-hour training program.
• These doubts led to the elimination of the portfolio test as the major tool to
gain certification, and the development of Teacher Competency Tests: a
pre-test to determine the eligibility to enter the 90-hour training program,
and a post-test to justify teacher’s quality in meeting desired
competencies, and therefore eligibility to receive professional allowance.
• A combination from the pressure from teacher associations (most teachers
must be competent) and financial exigencies (Ministry of Finance wants to
ensure the budget for professional allowance is absorbed) led to the
Ministry of Education set a passing grade of 30% in the pre-test
competency test.
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11. • The impact of decentralization.
• Context: Decentralization often stops at the district level.
Little change/reform happened at the level that mattered
most: the community and the school. A district can be in
charge of 1000 schools.
• In an decentralized system, substantial policy making and
planning authority and resources moved down from central
level to district level.
• The implementation processes and resources moved up from
sub-district to district level.
• This means district-level offices became much more powerful.
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12. • Other issues with decentralization:"
1. Division of labor among different levels were unclear
and incomplete.
2. The lack of technical and management skills at the
lower levels of the system (e.g., planning, budgeting,
procurement, accounting).
3. The lack of willingness of the upper level to give up its
authority.
4. The lack of pressure felt by district offices to work
within a common framework, especially since the
central government lost its “carrots & sticks” approach.
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13. 5. Decentralization leads to the increase of teacher workforce, thus, the costs
of certification. Between 2006 and 2010, 260,000 primary and secondary
teachers were recruited across Indonesia in the following scheme:
Fund transfer from central government to local government is determined
partly by the number of civil servants. The more civil servants, the larger
the fund. Thus, this incentivized teacher hiring, while teacher-student ratio
was already low.
Incentives to hire more teachers can also be related to the School
Operational Assistance program , launched in 2005. Schools use part of
the funds to hire more teachers.
6. The appointment of heads of local government sectoral offices, including
education, were prone to manipulation and/or favoritism, rather than based
on merit and experience.
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14. 7. Decentralization legitimizes the heads of district’s
education offices to:
• appointing subdistrict heads and school principals.
• requesting for and deploying new teaching posts.
• prioritizing candidates to obtain the 4-year degree and
to enter the certification process.
• be reluctant to withhold the professional allowance for
teachers who fail to meet the criteria because of the local
personal and political pressures.
8. Parent empowerment as part of the decentralization
(school-based management) did not happen much.
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15. • In conclusion, local government has more resources
(the economic impact) and more power (the political
impact). This raises concerns about fairness and
propriety of teacher management and development.
• Thus, the Teacher Law’s focus on longer-term,
continuing quality improvement achieved through
flexible, more adaptable, and individualized
implementation has in some ways been lost because
of (a) political pressures for rapid certification and
standardized treatment for all, and (b) economic
pressures to quickly and completely spend the new
funds moving into the education system.
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16. • The focus on a “structural” rather than a “cultural”
solution to the low status and competency levels of
teachers—including a formal degree, portfolios and
multiple-choice tests, standardized certification
processes, and standardized content for quality
improvement, all leading to formal professional
labeling and greater income—resulted, in some
people’s view, in the downgrading of what in the
past had actually been the basis for status: a
strong commitment to and passion for teaching.
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17. • Conclusion 1 The Indonesian Teacher Law of
2005 is unusual in the comprehensiveness of its
various components and of the institutions,
mechanisms, strategies, and processes put in
place to implement it.
It is also unusual in the principal incentive
designed to inspire it: the granting of status as a
“professional” and, probably more important, the
large and unconditional increase in income
provided upon gaining this status.
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18. • Conclusion 2 The evolution of the Teacher Law of 2005
from its original conceptualization to its current state of
implementation is not unusual for major reforms. From
larger macro-level political and economic considerations
to more personal and institutional rivalries, a number of
complications have arisen to delay or derail the
implementation of various parts of the reform.
These are well understood by the Ministry of Education
and Culture, and steps are being undertaken to resolve
many of them. Whether these steps are successful will
go a long way toward determining whether the lofty
goals and aspirations of the Teacher Law are finally met.
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