Fatihah Ulya Hakiem

Redefining School
Indonesia is the only ASEAN country that belongs to the G-20
countries, which means Indonesia has a major economy thanks to its
population being the fourth largest in the world. However, according
to the Global Competitiveness Report 2014-2015 issued by The World
Economic Forum, Indonesia only ranked 34 out of 144 countries. It
means, even though we have such a significant strength in economy,
we are still lacking in the performance department. Looking back in
PISA (Program for International Student Assessment) report in 2012,
Indonesian students rank second to last in performance.
Indonesias low scores indicate that Indonesia needs to work on its
education. This is probably because our students are taught to rote
learn instead of creative learning. Students are forced to study to
fulfill the curriculum needs and get high marks in assessments and
examinations. It is also common for Indonesian parents to hope for
their children to get accepted into favorite schools instead of enjoying
and deepen the learning process.
Besides, studying in hope to get to favorite school is an example of
academic labelling, where some academic institutions are labelled as
good and some as bad. While such classification help parents to
find suitable schools for their children, it also results in the
misdirection of education. Parents will try to enroll their children in
cram schools to supplement lessons their children received in school.
The existence of the bad and good schools admittedly result in
the difference in the learning quality inside classes. Whereas, schools
should only be differ in facilities, not the learning quality. When the
learning quality has degraded so much, it also make the schools
position as a place to learn questioned.
This issue let us to look back on the true definition of school. School
should be more than an institution or place for teaching and receiving
education, but also a place to get a diverse learning community.
School should allow its students to develop creative and critical
thinking. But up to this day, we still rarely see that in Indonesian
schools, especially in public ones.
There are two things we can do to improve the learning quality in
classrooms in order to close the discrepancy between the good and
bad schools.
First, the quality of the teachers should be improved. This actually has
been realized in 2005, when the government implemented the
teacher law to improve the quality of teachers. Under the new law,
teachers must obtain certification by completing a 4-year college
degree and continue to improve their skills. However, a degree is not
enough to create an interesting learning environment. Teachers

Fatihah Ulya Hakiem

should always be encouraged to join in training that help them to

learn how to educate students well.
Second, the government must take tremendous effort in raising the
number of quality teachers in Indonesia. To do this, first off Indonesia
has to guarantee the teachers welfare, for example by giving
incentives. After all, almost every developed countries give their
teachers the upmost benefits as the educators of their young
generation.
To make school live to its purpose, the first thing we could do is to
provide quality teachers for every schools in Indonesia; only after we
do that we can improve any conditions caused by our education
systems.