- 1) the central government has had at its disposal or been able to devise policy instruments that are effective in disciplining local governments and it has maintained a commitment to these policy instruments even in the face of opposition;

- 2) local civil society groups are present and able to launch effective public campaigns demanding reform, exploiting their ability to access the independent media and, if necessary, the courts; and local governments are able to find effective ways of buying off the losers from reform;

- 3) mid-level government officials, especially ones at the local education agency, have judged that reform initiatives can be exploited for patronage purposes; secured support from above; and together with senior officials devised effective strategies for managing the politics of reform (by, for instance, securing the support of the DPRD and buying off the losers from reform);

- 4) reform-minded district leaders have been elected providing an imperative for education agency officials to design reform programs and the latter have had access to relevant ideas and policy advice as a result of contact with donors; and/or

- 5) teachers and the patronage and political networks of which they are part have stood to lose little from reform in the first place.

# **5. Specific Issues**

## **5.1 Teacher Numbers and Cost**

The introduction of a new Constitutional requirement for Indonesian governments at all levels to spend at least 20 percent of their respective budgets on education has, as noted earlier, witnessed a massive increase in total government spending on education. Much of this new spending has gone to teachers’ salaries as a result of three concurrent developments: strong growth in recruitment of new teachers at all levels of the school system; large increases in teacher pay, particularly as a result of the introduction of a new certification program in the late 2000s (see below); and the conversion of large numbers of _guru honor_ to _guru PNS_ , producing a substantial increase in both their pay and their cost to the budget (World Bank 2013: 44-45).

This privileging of teacher employment and salaries as an item of education expenditure has been consistent with the interests of political and bureaucratic elites at both the central and regional levels as well as, of course, teachers themselves. For political and bureaucratic elites at the central level (especially incumbent or aspiring politicians), the recruitment of additional teachers and increases in their pay has been a way of securing political support within the school system and potentially votes at election time. For officials within MenPAN, these policies have represented an opportunity to sell access to a new form of state largesse—that is, additional civil service positions. For officials at the local level, these policies have represented an opportunity to expand and consolidate local patronage and political networks by capturing this new form of largesse and the rent-seeking opportunities it provides. For teachers themselves, these policies have entailed higher incomes through better remuneration and, in the case of _guru honor_ who have been upgraded to PNS status, both higher incomes and better conditions of employment.

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