securing increased remuneration for teachers), technocratic efforts to promote improved teacher quality led to the passage of Law 14/2005 on Teachers and Lecturers. This law made it compulsory for Indonesian teachers to be certified and, in conjunction with a series of subsequent government regulations, specified the conditions under which they would be deemed to meet certification requirements and receive an associated professional allowance equal to teachers’ base salary, effectively doubling their income.

Led by Fasli Jalal, then Director-General of Quality Improvement of Teachers and Education Personnel (LMPTK), and with World Bank support, a team within MoNE developed a model for assessing teacher competence. They determined that teachers would be deemed competent if they: i) held the equivalent of a four year higher education degree (S1); ii) taught a minimum 24 periods per week; and iii) could demonstrate competence in teaching as assessed in the classroom by trained assessors and through a program of individualized in-service training.<sup>23</sup> This model ran up against opposition from the PGRI and other teacher unions which saw the competency tests as a threat to increased pay for many of their members—something they in turn saw as a ‘right’. Led by the PGRI, they lobbied the national parliament—which had control over the budget for implementation of the competency tests—to have this element of the model thrown out, presumably threatening to mobilize the teacher vote against politicians who stood in their way. The result was a compromise whereby teacher competence was assessed in two stages. In the first stage teachers prepared a portfolio of achievement comprising documents such as personal references, publications, certificates of attendance at ins-service courses, model lesson plans. These were then be evaluated by local teacher education institutions selected by MoNE. Teachers whose portfolios were approved proceeded directly to certification. In the second stage, teachers whose portfolios were not approved were required to attend a 90-hour training program and assessed on its content. Teachers who passed the associated test then proceeded to certification as well (Chang _et al_ 2014: 30).

The compromise system proved to be problematic in practice as corrupt behavior on the part of teachers, education agency officials, and staff at teacher education institutions undermined the assessment of portfolios and in the 90-hour training program. Teachers were soon able to buy portfolios on the street while virtually all participants passed the 90-hour program. In response, the central government changed the certification process so that the portfolio assessment became a minor component and a 90 hour program of professional development became the principal pathway to certification. But this had little impact on pass rates.<sup>24</sup> Not surprisingly, numerous studies of the impact of the certification program have indicated that it has had led to little, if any, improvement in teacher subject knowledge or pedagogical skills or student learning (see, for instance, Chang _et al_ 2014; World Bank 2015).

The central government subsequently introduced a Competency Test for teachers ( _Uji Kompetensi Guru_ ) in 2012 aimed at assessing teachers’ subject knowledge and pedagogical skills. Conducted using multiple choice questions and done in part on-line, the results have provided further evidence of low teacher quality. Of 1.6 million teachers assessed in 2015, 1.3 million gained a score of below 60 on a scale from 0-100 ( _Kompas_ 2015a). The teacher unions, including the PGRI, have strongly opposed this test, apparently fearing that it will eventually be incorporated into the certification process in some way (Sugiharto 2012). The FSGI, supported by the FGII, ICW, LBH and the Education Coalition, even went to the point of trying

> 23 Interview with an informed source, January 2013.

> 24 Interview with an informed source, January 2013. See also World Bank (2015: 15).

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