Indonesia Need (more than) Merdeka Belajar a la Nadiem to Reform Unreformed
By: Suhandi Hasan
Tags: Freedom Of Learning, Teacher Recruitment, Education Reform, Low Quality Of Teachers

Photo by Husniati Salma on Unsplash

For decades education in Indonesia has been facing several problems related to quality and access, as well as the even distribution of well-trained teachers. Although Indonesia’s current education policy, Merdeka Belajar (Freedom of Learning), has tried to address these problems by reforming students’ performance assessments, classroom teaching plans (lesson plans), and school zoning. Yet, the most vital one, the aim of education, has not fully provided hope for the people through the values and benefits.

In fact, this “Merdeka Belajar a ala Nadiem” is not even close to the freedom of learning itself. Instead of creating a good quality of the human resource, the educational logic behind this “slogan” is more likely to produce workforces to fulfill market demands. Since the first day selected as the Ministry of Education, Nadiem’s focus is to improve Indonesian students' performance on PISA.

Unsurprisingly, Indonesia’s Human Development Index (IPM) in 2019 has reached 71,92, or 0,74 percent increased from which in 2018. As a parameter to classify the status of a nation (developed, developing, or underdeveloped), IPM apparently shows the condition of education in Indonesia today as it is used to measure the impact of economic policies on quality of life. Yet, this result should not “shut our eyes” to some embedded issues such as the low quality of graduates and the irrelevance of education to the needs of the community, and worse of all, the politicization of education in locals governments.

To be fair, what Nadiem has tried to address is inherent to the purpose of Indonesia education, to achieve the intellectual life of the nation. However, as some observers said, “the biggest challenge of human resources development in Indonesia is not teachers’ work overload, but the educators’ low competence”. Based on professional and scientific requirements, they still have low pedagogy quality. Half of 3 million teachers in Indonesia are non-bachelor holders and have not been certified.

Conversely, teacher certification policies, initially as an attempt to make the existing teachers become professional teachers, have failed to make teachers become professional. This happens because teachers who pursue certification solely motivated in pursuit of the benefits of certification. Once they get a certificate, there is no sign of them turn out to be professional teachers, both in designing, developing, implementing, assessing, and diagnosing various problems faced by learners seen no difference between teachers who are certified by a yet certified. On the other hand, Indonesia’s teacher professional development (TPD) programs have fallen short because of incoherence to the education system.

Moreover, the poor teacher recruitment system has contributed to low teacher quality. Instead of considering merit as indicators of teacher performance, the Indonesian government recruits teachers because of social expectations prioritizing seniority. Some barriers to recruiting good teachers are the institutional, political economy, and social dynamics of the recruitment process. Therefore, these “unreformed” issues need a reform agenda that is driven by a desire to improve the quality of basic education in Indonesia. This agenda should be based on the increased management capacity and accountability at each level of government, empowerment of schools in planning and implementing their own strategies to improve the quality of education, build capabilities better teaching and back clarify the central institutional structures to fit a new mandate from the people.

To do so, the RISE suggests policymakers consider the possible areas of reform.