terms of overall numbers ( _Kompas_ 2015b). Finally, organizations representing _guru honor_ have continued to organize regular demonstrations at both local sites and in Jakarta demanding that these teachers get a better deal including conversion to PNS status. In some regions, the result has been the introduction of new allowances for _guru honor_ —in one, for instance, the provincial government has recently introduced a new monthly allowance for _guru honda_ of Rp50,000.<sup>21</sup> But, so far, the central government has refused to budge on the moratorium, having little room to manoeuver in the context of slowing economic growth and a tight budget. In fact, it has recently lowered the level at which the moratorium becomes effective from 50 to 40 percent of the regional government budget. It has also decided recently to reduce the proportion of BOS funds that can be used to employ _guru honor_ from 20 percent to 15 percent, making it harder for schools to continue employing honorary staff to replace lost _guru PNS_ .

In the case of the moratorium, the central government’s intransigence undoubtedly reflects the fact that it is paying the bill for teachers’ salaries while the political and patronage benefits of _guru PNS_ appointments accrue largely to local political and bureaucratic elites. In the case of the cuts to the BOS funds, it also probably reflects the fact that this move has attracted little open opposition from teachers and their unions—certainly much less than the moratorium. This may be because, as a number of school principals noted in interviews, schools have so far been able to retain _guru honor_ by reassigning them to non-teaching duties. Principals appeared during these interviews to have had a firm reluctance to dismiss _guru honor_ for being surplus to requirements, a pattern of behavior consistent with the logic of patronage networks.

In sum, then, the policy issue of teacher numbers and costs illustrates that reform is possible where the central government uses or devises policy instruments that are effective in disciplining local governments and maintains a commitment to these instruments even in the face of opposition.

# **5.2 Employment and Promotion**

The issue of teacher employment and promotion presents a similar story. As noted above, MenPAN officials have been accused of exploiting their control over the number and type of new _guru PNS_ positions awarded to regions to ‘sell’ civil service positions to regional elites looking for additional patronage resources. At the same time, local political and bureaucratic elites have had control over teacher and, in particular, school principal appointments enabling them to build patronage and political networks capable of generating sizeable rents, distributing patronage, and mobilizing significant numbers of votes at election time. They have been able to build such networks by i) appointing friends, family-members, and political supporters to teacher positions and in particular school principal positions or alternatively selling such positions to the highest bidder rather than appointing the best qualified or most capable candidates; ii) promoting such individuals further upward into the local education agency where even greater rent-seeking opportunities exist; and iii) ensuring that political enemies are demoted, _di-nonjob-kan_ , or rotated ( _dimutasi_ ) to less lucrative and more remote schools. The overall effect has been to undermine the quality of both Indonesia’s teachers and school principals.

> 21 This policy has in turn triggered demands from _guru honor_ appointed by school principals to have their status changed to _guru honda_ . Interview with a PGRI activist representing honorary teachers, Municipality B, August 2015B.

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