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From User Fees to Fee Free: The Politics of Realising Universal Free Basic Education in Indonesia
Abstract
Several developing countries have recently introduced policies supporting universal basic free education (UFBE). Experience suggests such policies often fail to increase access and quality of education, and illegal fees are widely prevalent. The literature identifies several reasons including the lack of replacement funding in place of fees and the loss of quality due to overcrowding and subsequent high drop-out rates. This article, using evidence from Indonesia's experience, argues that the underlying problem is political. We suggest that fee-free education is an attainable goal, but only if pro-UFBE interest groups are empowered to influence policy, demand accountability and seek redress against illegal fees.
... Amid and following these changes, electorally attuned political leaders in various districts and municipalities newly empowered by decentralization began ramping up local education spending and introduced new programs of free basic education, a policy that had first been introduced at the national level in the 1970s but never properly implemented. Political elites at the center followed suit, with the Yudhoyono government introducing a scheme of school grants (BOS) in 2005 aimed at reducing tuition and other school fees and formally reintroducing free basic education as government policy in 2009 (Rosser & Joshi, 2013). ...
... These moves were broadly endorsed by popular elements such as NGOs, parent groups, university student organizations, and independent teacher unions who saw them as a necessary corrective to New Order underfunding of education and the equity-related problems it had caused. They were also endorsed by the Indonesian Teachers Union (PGRI), an organization closely linked to the education bureaucracy at both the national and local levels, because of the opportunities that increased education spending presented in terms of teacher income and rent-seeking opportunities for education officials (Rosser & Joshi, 2013). Finally, they appeared to be popular with the voting public, helping-along with a variety of other new social programs-to secure Yudhoyono's reelection as President in 2009 (Mietzner, 2009). ...
... This included school-based management, transformation of schools and HEIs into corporate bodies, new accreditation processes for schools and HEIs, the opening up of the higher education sector to foreign HEIs, changes to the country's national exam (see below), a new teacher certification program, and efforts to promote a more efficient and equitable distribution of teachers within and between districts. While supportive of increased public spending on education and free basic education in principle, technocratic elements and their donor supporters also pushed back against the minimum public spending requirement and free basic education program because of concerns about their fiscal implications (Rosser & Joshi, 2013). ...
This introductory chapter addresses issues of educational inequality in Indonesia and highlights the needs of critical approaches to investigate education in Indonesia. Critical approaches enable the analyses of the underlying structures and hegemonic discourses that have become the roots of various social injustices. This chapter explains the focus of the book, i.e. social justice in education, as the overarching theme in examining the contemporary Indonesian education system. It offers critical examinations of Indonesian education policies and practices by inviting contributions from critical scholars, academics, researchers, and practitioners to deepen their understanding of education in Indonesia.
... Citizens are much less likely to vote for those who promise to improve educational quality, because they often do not believe politicians can directly influence the quality of local schools (Harding, 2015). However, despite the political incentives to support fee-free education policies, some countries have found it difficult to maintain these reforms leading to uneven educational outcomes (Bown, 2009;Kosack, 2009;Plank, 1990;Rosser & Joshi, 2013;Sasaoka & Nishimura, 2010). For example, Amedahe and Chandramohan (2009) show that while fee-free education became government policy in Ghana in 1961, the government was unable to enforce it due to inadequate resources and infrastructure; the policy was effectively abandoned by subsequent administrations in the 1970s. ...
... The introduction and elimination of education fees are shaped by conflict and contestation among stakeholders operating at multiple scales-from the local school level through to the national and international scale (Kosack, 2009;Plank, 1990;Rosser & Joshi, 2013;Walton, 2019). ...
... Three key implications flow from these findings. First, as others have found in different contexts (Kosack, 2009;Plank, 1990;Rosser & Joshi, 2013), in PNG the effectiveness and nature of education (and other) reform is significantly shaped by the political incentives to localise state resources. The TFF policy became PNG's longest running attempt at fee-free education, in part because the O'Neill government was-for a long time-able to ensure national control of the policy's management and implementation. ...
Around the world, policymakers have found it difficult to sustain fee-free education policies. This article shows how politicians can significantly undermine national fee-free education policies by redirecting resources to subnational administrations, where funds can be used to shore up political support. To do so it examines changes to political support towards Papua New Guinea’s longest running fee-free education policy. The Tuition Fee Free (TFF) policy was introduced in 2012 under the government of Prime Minister Peter O’Neill before the policy was abolished, and the subsidy supporting it reduced, in 2019 by a new government led by Prime Minister James Marape. Following the introduction of the TFF policy in 2012, national politicians empowered subnational governments to control TFF subsidies, while education and other funding had started to flow to newly created district administrations. This paved the way for politicians to maintain fee-free education policy in some subnational administrations when the Marape government cut the TFF subsidy. This article suggests that in Papua New Guinea, as in some other developing countries, politicians are incentivised to administer fee-free education policies at subnational rather than national administrative scales. Sustaining universal fee-free education policies will require changing these incentives.
... We build on other recent literature that has tried to explain local government service provision in Indonesia (Rosser, 2012;Rosser & Joshi, 2013;Rosser, Wilson, & Sulistiyanto, 2011;von Luebke, 2009), using case studies from three large Indonesian cities. Across the three case studies, we look for evidence of both supply-side and demand-side factors that might hinder the development of wastewater infrastructure and also the institutions that would support long-term service delivery. We describe a deleterious interaction between supply-side and demand-side constraints. ...
... Most obviously, there are budget constraints, and government officials must make difficult decisions about what services they are going to provide. Recent analyses of Indonesian service delivery reveal that local governments have allowed illegal fees to persist in the health and education sectors because this allows them to avoid having to reallocate funding from other parts of the budget that are catering to other constituencies (Rosser, 2012;Rosser & Joshi, 2013). ...
... Rosser et al. (2011) provide examples from the health and education sectors, juxtaposing bupati who were able to rely on their preexisting patronage networks and therefore who did not supply social services to their citizens, against bupati who needed to seek popular approval and did so exactly by improving the quality of healthcare and education. In two related papers, Rosser (2012) and Rosser and Joshi (2013) argue that pro-poor NGOs have successfully mobilized in order to reduce the persistence of illegal fees in the health care and education sectors respectively. These "pro-poor political entrepreneurs" (Rosser & Joshi, 2013, p. 176) have been able to advocate on health and education issues in such a way as to catalyze change by local politicians (with the right strategic incentives). ...
Indonesia drastically lags behind other countries in Southeast Asia and at similar levels of development in supplying urban wastewater sanitation. We use case studies from three cities in Indonesia to better understand why wastewater services are underprovided. We find strong demand-side constraints that interact with supply-side decision making. After comparing the urban wastewater sector in Indonesia to the health, education, and rural wastewater sectors in the country and to the urban wastewater sector in other Southeast Asian countries, we conclude by arguing for an increase in educational programs that will foment citizen demands on the government.
... Around the world, policymakers find it difficult to maintain a cost-free education policy because politicians can significantly undermine national cost-free education policies by diverting resources to sub-national administrations, where funds can be used to shore up political support (Walton & Hushang, 2021). In addition, contradictory research results were found, in which the experience of developing countries shows that free education policies often fail to improve access and quality of education (Bentaouet- Rosser & Joshi, 2013;Somerset, 2009;Walton & Hushang, 2021), but other research shows that free education policies improve access to education and the quality of learning or education (Arends-Kuenning & Vieira, 2015;Chatterjee, 2018;Chicoine, 2019;Honga, 2020, Lyanga & Chen, 2020Marzuki, 2011;Munadi, 2013;Rahman & Nasihin, 2020, Ruswati & Shang'wet, 2020. Therefore, based on previous research, it was found that research is more focused on implementing fee-free education policy and evaluating free education policies; no research has examined the effect of free education policies on equitable access and improving the quality of learning in Indonesia, and there are inconsistencies in previous studies. ...
... In addition, the implementation of the free school policy cannot be expected in the efforts of schools to be of high quality based on the National Education Standards (SNP) and the motivation of students and parents to support the improvement of the quality of education to low community participation is still not optimal (Rahman & Nasihin, 2020;Ruswati & Munadi, 2013). This problem needs to be followed up through the role of local governments essential for the sustainability of this policy (Rosser & Joshi, 2013). ...
In relation to fee-free education policy, previous research was dominated by the implementation and evaluation of these policies, and no research has examined the effect of free education policies on equitable access and improving the quality of learning in Indonesia. The study aimed to examine the effect of free education policies on equitable access to education services and the quality of learning in Indonesia. The method used is quantitative with Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) data analysis. The results showed that: 1) the implementation of the free education policy had a direct and significant effect of 68.5% on equal access to education services, 2) the implementation of the free education policy had a direct and significant effect of 29.6% on improving the quality of learning, 3) the implementation of the free education policy also indirectly has an effect of 49.8% on improving the quality of learning, 4) the implementation of equitable access to educational services has a direct and significant effect of 72.7% on improving the quality of learning. This research contributes to providing an overview of the effectiveness of free education policies through school operational assistance funds to implementers and policy recipients and assists the government in formulating policies that will be able to help accelerate the achievement of national education goals.
... Karena politisi secara tidak langsung andil melemahkan kebijakan pendidikan nasional dengan mengalihkan sumber daya ke pemerintah daerah, dimana dana tersebut dapat digunakan untuk meningkatkan dukungan politik (Walton & Hushang, 2021). Selain itu, ditemukan hasil penelitian yang kontradiktif, dimana pengalaman negara berkembang menunjukkan bahwa kebijakan pendidikan seringkali gagal meningkatkan akses dan kualitas pendidikan (Bentaouet-Kattan, 2006;Rosser & Joshi, 2013;Somerset, 2009;Walton & Hushang, 2021). Namun penelitian lain menunjukkan bahwa kebijakan pendidikan yang didukung pendanaan pemeirntah meningkatkan akses terhadap pendidikan dan kualitas pembelajaran atau pendidikan (Arends-Kuenning & Vieira, 2015;Chatterjee & Robitaille, 2018). ...
This article aims to analyze the implementation of the tasks and functions of educational empowerment, analyze the role of the government in educational empowerment, and analyze the strategies of educational empowerment in Beoga Village, West Beoga District, Puncak Regency. Research method: Case study method. This thesis concludes several things as follows: The tasks and functions of educational empowerment in West Beoga District can be said to be not going well, especially in implementing the tasks and functions of education as an actor in socializing the nation's socio-cultural ideology and values, preparing the workforce to reduce poverty, ignorance and promote social change, and equal distribution of income and opportunities, caused by the security conditions (conflict areas) that resulted in the absence of learning activities in schools, in addition to the absence of teachers who were displaced and afraid of the conflict, as well as the reluctance of students to go to school due to the conflict that occurred. The role of educational empowerment as community servants, facilitators and provision of funds is not working well in North Beoga district, this can be seen from the lack of development of existing educational facilities and infrastructure such as local classes, reading books, curriculum, teaching aids and the inadequate quality of teachers. This role is also not optimal due to the lack of local government budget support for the education sector. The educational empowerment strategy, especially in improving the quality of teachers and students, is not working well. This condition is characterized by the lack of development of teachers' competence and professionalism through education and training, technical guidance and strengthening of other competencies, thus affecting the quality of education services in West Beoga District.
... Elementary and junior high school education are the responsibility of the city/district government, while senior high school is under the authority of the Provincial Government. The central government is responsible for education at all levels, including school management and monitoring (Lewis & Pattinasarany, 2011;Rosser & Joshi, 2013). In general, the government has worked hard to improve the quality of education at all levels. ...
Learning science in the archipelago has challenges and obstacles even though there has been a change in curriculum. The problem in this study is how science is taught in the context of the KBK, KTSP and K-13 curricula. The aims of this research is to develop the curriculum from the KBK to the 2013 Curriculum in science learning. Qualitative research was carried out using case studies to check conditions through in-depth interviews with informants. The informants involved were teachers and principals at 17 elementary schools as well as the head of the local education office. Data collection was carried out through structured interviews with informants. The research instrument was an interview question sheet containing approximately 7 question items developed by the researcher based on the research objectives. Data analysis was carried out qualitatively through reduction, data display, and conclusion. The research findings show that 80% of informants prefer science learning to be managed separately from other lesson content. Although each curriculum has advantages and limitations. This is considered more effective in ensuring a broader and deeper understanding of the science concept. In addition, it was also revealed that the availability of facilities and teacher competence are factors that support the success of learning science in elementary schools. For future researchers, it is recommended that learning and curriculum be designed by showing partiality to subject matter and not combining one field of science with another.
... The Ghana Free Compulsory Universal Basic Education (FCUBE) policy intended to increase enrolment and attendance at the primary level. The policy of getting every child to school has received greater recommendation throughout the developing world especially Ghana [3]. Several policies from free education to universal basic education have been implemented in many developing countries including Ghana. ...
The study focused on whether there is any involvement and the need for the Ghana Education Service (GES) in the operations of the school feeding programme in Ghana. The Ghana Education Service has supervised similar programmes as the main agency in charge to improve efficiency in delivery. The purpose and intent of the Ghana education service will better be served if they are in control of the school feeding programme. The study sampled 350 teachers as the target group and other stakeholders which included directors of education, school feeding programme, parents and students. With a mixed method and the use of questionnaire and interviews, the study analyzed responses based on percentages and themes respectively. The study concluded that the Ghana Education Service (GES) is not involve in the operations of the school feeding programme. They are stated as partners in its operations but are not consulted in the recruiting of schools and caterers as part of the programme operations. But they do have the competence to run the school feeding programme effectively and efficiently and will reduce political influence when the programme is under the Ghana education service as a public institution.
... Seeing the importance of the cost and supporting infrastructure for schools to meet the costs of education, the construction of educational facilities and facilities, especially physical facilities, teaching tools, and study rooms, as well as the completeness of student handbooks and others is to overcome this problem. The distribution of free textbooks to elementary school students throughout Indonesia is an action that has a positive influence on improving the quality of education in elementary schools (Muslicha, 2015;Rosser & Joshi, 2013). In addition to textbooks, it is also necessary to provide practical tools, laboratories, and mobile and school building repairs. ...
Principals face various problems, including the lack of disciplined educators and the lack of principal communication with educators and teaching staff. This study aimed to analyze the implementation of school-based management (SBM) in improving the character quality of elementary school students. This study uses a descriptive method with a qualitative approach. Data collection techniques used in this study were observation, interviews, and documentary studies. The data analysis technique used in this research is qualitative data analysis. The results showed the implementation of School-Based Management in forming student character. Program planning begins with various socializations at coordination meetings between schools, committees, and related parties. Student character formation can be formed by collaborating in each subject, namely applying discipline, good manners, and respect for others. One of the moral values teachers must instill in elementary school education is cultivating character values in students. The implementation of SBM is in line with the education decentralization policy that provides management autonomy according to its authority and provides good services to all internal and external interested parties in fulfilling the character of high-quality students for a nation.
... Shaturaev, 2021). While the program is still small, with fewer than 1,000 students participating in 2016, numbers have increased steadily since its launch in 2010 (Rosser & Joshi, 2013). Meanwhile, funding for the Indonesia Endowment Fund for Education, a governmental scholarship program for graduate students studying both domestically and abroad, has more than doubled between 2016 and 2017, from USD 105 million toUSD$225 million. ...
Indonesia, home to 273 million people, is the fourth most populous country in the world. It is also the largest archipelago on the globe. Its territory spans more than 17,000 islands that stretch for 3,181 miles along the equator between the Pacific and Indian Oceans. About 87 percent of Indonesia's population is Sunni Muslim, making Indonesia the largest majority Muslim country in the world. Compulsory education in Indonesia faces various major educational issues such as financing, poor academic results, shortage of teachers both in rural and urban areas. These obstacles put Indonesia far from being excellent academically even with a bigger expenditure on education in the state. Throughout the research, the author tried widely draw a picture of the education system of the Republic of Indonesia as it is a part of the dissertation. The researcher has chosen field observation and analysis of available data to define the current condition of compulsory education, financing towards the national education system, teaching-learning process, and academic achievements of Indonesian school children. Collected data shows that the Government of Indonesia needs further educational reforms.
... This achievement was also supported by the allocation of 20 percent of the national budget for education and by the Free School Programme (FSP) policy in (MoNE, 2009. However, it is important to note here that although FSP is in place, formal and informal fees continue to be required (Rosser and Joshi, 2013). n/a n/a 71 75 Cambodia n/a n/a n/a n/a Viet Nam n/a n/a n/a n/a Despite the steady improvement in access and funding, improvements in the quality of education in Indonesia have been sluggish. ...
Literature and research on educational leadership and management have received increasing attention in the last three decades. However, out-of-school leadership and community education are two areas that remain under-researched, globally and in Indonesia. This study aims at gaining an understanding of the ways in which the leadership of community education is practiced in Indonesia. It examines the nature of leadership in Indonesian Community Learning Centres (CLCs). It further explores CLC organisational structure, the relationship of CLCs with the community, CLC networking and partnership strategies, curriculum development, and the methods employed by CLC leaders and teachers to engage with learners. The study embraced constructivist and critical paradigms, employing a multiple case study design to obtain thick data from four purposively-selected CLCs in three different regions of Indonesia. Nine participants were selected from each case CLC and its community to investigate the ways in which the leadership of community education is practiced. Interviews, observations and document reviews were employed as the methods to collect data. Thematic analysis was used to generate themes from the data, linked to the research questions. The study found that CLC leadership in Indonesia is susceptible to various dimensions of context and community, and it focuses on social justice by aiming to provide equitable learning opportunities for all. The empirical findings indicate that both state and privately funded CLC leaders resisted government policy about ideal CLC organisational structure by developing a structure that best suits the context and community where they are working. While acknowledging community as the primary reason of CLC establishment, the study reveals that relationships between the community and the CLCs are mutual. The empirical evidence suggests that building and expanding networks and partnerships primarily mean maintaining good relationships with government authorities to secure resources to support each CLC’s daily operation. The study also discovers that CLC leadership calls for individualised and self-directed learning by resisting to fully follow the prescribed government curriculum. The study shows that, in CLC leadership, persuasion is key to student engagement, as many of them have experienced some level of exclusion and marginalisation from education. The study provides recommendations for practice at CLC level, policy makers at the national level, and for further research. The study recommends that CLC leaders need to engage better public accountability measures, to the state and the community members, to gain more support, and to explain how resources are (re)distributed respectively. It also recommends that policy makers should maintain and increase support for community education and its programmes, because CLC leaders and teachers try to fulfil the government’s promise to ensure education for all. Finally, the study recommends further research to widen the geographical coverage of the study, involve other categories of CLCs, and explore the perceptions of government officials, to provide complementary data for comprehensive understanding of CLC leadership.
... Students pay fees only in high school, but, even with the free education, there are other user fees charged at public primary and junior secondary schools. The user fees have been reduced especially for the poor in the post-Suharto period after the resignation of the president Suharto in 1998, but they have not been eliminated (Rosser & Joshi, 2013). ...
This study investigates the effect of parental aspirations gap on children’s educational attainment between 2007 and 2014, using two waves of Indonesian Family Life Survey data. The aspirations gap is measured by the difference between one’s future reference point and his or her current life evaluation reported by each household head and spouse. The results show that boys whose fathers report a moderate level of the aspirations gap achieve substantially longer schooling years than the mean level of their same age cohort. Furthermore, the relationship is found to be inversely U-shaped, implying that an excessive aspirations gap discourages investment in children’s human capital. An increasing aspirations gap of parents is also found to impede the educational attainment of children in poor families, which are more vulnerable to shocks that are found to increase the gap. Overall, the results of this paper shed light on the role of parental aspirations gap in the link between socioeconomic status of family and educational outcomes of children in Indonesia, where the gap of the poor is found to increase faster than the rich.
... Local governments, other stakeholders, and foreign parties may provide non-obligatory funding support (B) for investments and non-personnel operational costs (e.g. topping up BOS for state madrasah) (Rosser, Joshi 2013). ...
The education system in Indonesia has two main subsystems, one under the management of the Ministry of Education and Culture (MoEC), and madrasah education and religious education under the management of the Ministry of Religious Affairs (MoRA). Out of approximately 233,517 state schools and madrasah, about 82% are state schools and the remaining 18% are madrasah; and out of 49,402,000 students from these institutions, 87% are registered in-state schools and other 13% are registered in madrasah. Indonesian laws and regulations require state schools and madrasah to be treated equally. Moreover, madrasah teaches the same national curriculum in addition to Islamic religious subjects regulated by MoRA. The author tried to define the current circumstance of Islamic education in Indonesia, the academic issues that the government faces and sought possible solutions for them through field surveys and data analysis methods used throughout the investigation. The found data show that improper infrastructure of government contribution towards public education including religious education, and limited quota in pedagogical universities lead to a shortage of teachers in rural areas. The government of Indonesia needs further educational reforms in the area of public education, teacher training, and retraining qualified teachers, and school fees challenge the national education system in the country.
... Achieving the objective of the policy is a political problem reflecting inequalities of power. The policy therefore is achievable only if politics is done away with (Rosser & Joshi 2013). ...
The universal basic education policy enshrined in the constitution of Ghana is aimed at making education accessible and affordable for all Ghanaian citizens. This paper sought to assess whether the universal basic education policy really have an impact on access at the basic level. The study was carried out on the premise that the universal basic education policy has no impact on enrolment and retention. The study used enrolment data from randomly selected public basic schools. Ten(10) each as treatment and control schools. Descriptive statistics were used in the presentation of the data. The data was enrolment figures taken from the registers of the various schools under study. The study found out that enrolment and retention are on the increase. It again found out that girl's dropout rate was higher in control schools than boys. The study concluded that girl's enrolment and retention is largely determined by the universal basic education policy. It is therefore necessary for the provision of incentives for girls and better facilities to meet the increasing demand of enrolment and retention.
... Formal and informal but requisite payments are determined by school committees, comprising teachers, parents and other community members. Rosser and Joshi (2013) argue that the continuing charges have had a large negative effect on enrolments in Indonesia. Second, no school-level government regulations were instituted to insist on child compliance with the policy and no fines or other penalties were established for parents of children who did not complete the requisite number of school years, as they have been in other countries. ...
Having achieved near universal primary education by the late 1980s, Indonesia turned its attention to increasing secondary school enrolments. In this context, we examine the causal impact of Indonesia's 1994 compulsory junior secondary schooling initiative. We apply regression discontinuity methods to a sample of about 20,000 individuals. We investigate both intent-to-treat and treatment-on-the-treated effects. We subject our empirical examination to an exhaustive battery of robustness tests. We find no evidence that the compulsory schooling program increased educational attainment. The apparent lack of impact is a unique result across studies that have examined such reforms. We discuss some limitations in government implementation that may underlie program ineffectiveness and acknowledge possible shortcomings in our analysis that may drive the estimated null effects.
... It should be noted however, that although compulsory education has guaranteed the free education for all Indonesians, it is not entirely cost-free. In most cases, pupils and their parents have to pay for books, teaching materials and transportation (Rosser & Joshi, 2013;Rosser & Sulistiyanto, 2013;Zuilkowski, Samanhudi & Indriana, 2019). The implementation of the new program was also challenged by the district's ability in financing education, although the central government also have their responsibility in distributing the General Allocation Fund (DAU/Dana Alokasi Umum), which was designed to equalize the fiscal capacity among districts (Kristiansen, 2006). ...
This studyaims to explore women’s views and experiences ofinter-generationalearlychildbearing,and observethe mechanism of inherited early motherhoodin Indonesia.Sixinformantsof in-depth interview were womenwho gave birth before the age of 18 and have a motheror daughter who wasalso a teenage mother.As women have beenthrough different events in their life trajectories,the feeling and experience of being a teenage mother were expressed differently by the threedifferentgenerations.Grandmothers expressed their regretfor missingtheirchance to continuetheirstudieswhen their parents forced them to marryyoung.Their disappointment with the current economic status and their past sorrow had placed early childbearingasaremorseful event.While the mothers’generation expressedless guilt, daughters showed no regretfortheir decision tobecometeenage mothers.Regarding the mechanism bywhich early childbearing is repeated across generations, socialtheory seemsto be the most convincing approach to explain how theyounger generation followed their parents in starting their childbearing early.It appearsthat,although theyounger generation has their own values in making fertility decisions, their attitudes and practicesare shaped fromtheir observation towards their parents’fertility behavior.
... Thus, providing teachers with an opportunity to learn in a transnational programme such as described in this study could be a way to develop school systems, providing that the teachers are given autonomy to adapt what they have learned to local circumstances and classrooms rather than taking an up-to-down approach and directly importing new practices from a foreign school system (Elliott 2014). Additionally, in a country like Indonesia, where access to higher education is a problem for people from low socioeconomic backgrounds, and those from rural areas (Rosser and Joshi 2013), bringing the programme to the students could be a means to enhance educational equality. ...
We examined Indonesian school teachers’ perceptions and expectations about their professional learning, and their justifications for these, before they embarked on a transnational master’s programme carried out in both Indonesia and Finland. The data were collected using the method of empathy-based stories. The findings showed that the teachers expected the programme content, execution and internationality to impact positively on their professional learning, while negative professional learning scenarios were framed as stemming from a lack of personal motivation or lack of support from the Indonesian community. Moreover, the teachers expected to become more skilled professionals not only as teachers in their classrooms but also more widely as experts in their communities.
... In terms of affordability of HE, the introduction of the 'non-regular route' admissions system at the existing ECB universities previewed a likely scenario of tuition fee hikes ( Welch 2007, Susanti 2011). We know from the literature on school dropout in Indonesia that even under a heavily state-subsidised funding structure, schools continue to levy informal costs from students (for example for textbooks, uniforms, contributions to school infrastructure projects) to a prohibitive extent, resulting in dropout (Widoyoko 2010;Rosser and Joshi 2013). It is therefore reasonable to assume that faced with reduced state funding, state schools and HEIs would pass on the extra costs to students/parents. ...
The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship between fair access policies and discourses of development through a policy analysis of higher education reform in post-authoritarian Indonesia (1998–present). The method was document analysis of five laws/regulations, using the criteria of accessibility, availability, and horizontality to identify the extent of fair access for students from (1) lower socioeconomic backgrounds and (2) under-developed regions of the archipelago. The analysis demonstrates how neoliberal, human capital, inclusive development and Pancasila discourses have been called upon in the making and un-making of a higher education market, with ultimately favourable outcomes for the fair access agenda.
... Technically, formal fees have been prohibited for primary school since 1977 and at government junior secondary schools since 1994. However, formal and informal user fees continue to be required (Rosser and Joshi 2013). Schools and individual teachers may levy fees to cover building renovations, uniforms, teaching materials, and photocopying, among other things (Widoyoko 2010). ...
Indonesia has dramatically increased school enrolment at the secondary level over the past several decades, as reflected in national statistics. However, significant variation in enrolment rates remains across regions and genders. In some areas, nearly all youth complete secondary school; in others fewer than half attend. This study investigates the reasons for secondary school dropout in Banten and Aceh, two provinces of Indonesia with lower-than-average secondary school enrolment rates. We interviewed 28 out-of-school youth and conducted focus groups and observations at non-formal education programs serving dropouts. We find that high costs for secondary school were the overwhelming reason for dropout, with a subset of boys also reporting behavioural issues as a contributing factor. While costs affected adolescent boys and girls equally, the options facing them after dropout differed sharply. The findings point to the need for easier paths back into formal education for youth who have dropped out.
... Accountability as good governance Sub theme 1: Accountability as transparency (Adams et al., 2008); (Simatupang, 2009); (Tjiptoherijanto, 2007) Sub theme 2: Accountability as citizen participation/ engagement (Pradhan et al., 2013); (Bandur, 2012); (Parker & Raihani, 2011); (Lewis, 2010); (Simatupang, 2009); (Firman, 2009); (Tjiptoherijanto, 2007); (Kristiansen & Pratikno, 2006); (Subroto, 2007); (King et al., 2004) Sub theme 3: Accountability as answerability (Rosser & Joshi, 2013); (Bandur, 2012); (Parker & Raihani, 2011); (Lewis, 2010); (Suryadarma, Surhayadi, Sumarto, & Rogers, 2006); (Kristiansen & Pratikno, 2006); (Bangay, 2005); (King et al., 2004); (Lateef et al., 2003); (Welch, 2007) Bureaucratic Accountability (Hendarman, 2014); (Bjork, 2003(Bjork, , 2004 As a result of my analysis from this literature review, I argue that while continuing the work on good governance initiatives, Indonesia must shift its focus to the professional accountability model. Professional accountability is much more suitable to the current understanding about teaching and learning (student-centered, complex-nonlinear). ...
Building on previous recent conversations on education accountability (e.g., Darling-Hammond, Wilhoit, & Pittenger, 2014; Fullan, Rincón-Gallardo, & Hargreaves, 2015; Hargreaves & Fullan, 2012), I propose a central idea for educational accountability: quality teaching and learning should be front and center in any educational accountability system. This idea advocates for a greater emphasis on the internal/professional accountability rather than the more popular and widespread external/bureaucratic accountability model. It strongly argues that bigger effort and resources must be given for capacity building rather than for performance measurement. In fact, within an education system like the one in Indonesia – arguably lacking quality inputs, adequate resources, poor capacity to produce expected results – policymakers should be very cautious in making high-stakes decisions based on narrow accountability performance results. Finally, this central idea demands equal attention paid to both student learning and teacher learning because quality teacher preparation and continuous teacher learning, I argue, are the main conditions for successful student learning, and for continuous school and system improvement.
I recommend several strategies for Indonesian education transformation in the educational accountability context. First, Indonesian teachers and schools should be committed to the professional vision of teachers and teaching. Second, Indonesian teachers, schools, education scholars, schools of education, and the government should be committed to the construction of the professional knowledge especially in teaching and learning. Third, given the serious lack of capacity in many areas of expertise within the Indonesian education system, including in its community of scholars, Indonesian government should constraint themselves from spending many resources on performance measurement. Rather, they should focus on creating and implementing sustainable meaningful programs aimed at building the capacity of teachers and schools as well as that of the education scholars and schools of education. Finally, Indonesian education management officials should shift from bureaucratic mentality to professional mentality.
... That said, recent literature on Indonesia shows that local governments provide services when incentives exist (Rosser, Wilson, and Sulistiyanto 2011;Rosser and Joshi 2013;Winters, Karim, and Martawardaya 2014). The 2009 Electricity Law gave new planning powers to the district governments and gave them the right to provide electricity directly to their region (with PLN retaining a right of first refusal for new power generation projects). ...
Despite having 40 per cent of the world’s potential for geothermal power production, Indonesia exploits less than five per cent of its own geothermal resources. We explore the reasons behind this lagging development of geothermal power and highlight four obstacles: (1) delays caused by the suboptimal decentralisation of permitting procedures to local governments that have few incentives to support geothermal exploitation; (2) rent-seeking behaviour originating in the point-source nature of geothermal resources; (3) the opacity of central government decision making; and (4) a historically deleterious national fuel subsidy policy that disincentivised geothermal investment. We situate our arguments against the existing literature and three shadow case studies from other Pacific countries that have substantial geothermal resources. We conclude by arguing for a more centralised geothermal governance structure. © 2015, GIGA German Institute of Global and Area Studies. All rights reserved.
... By declaring "failure" when service delivery objectives are not met, the iterative nature of SA processes is not acknowledged. For example, in Indonesia, the parents who protested publicly to demand accountability for free education were the same parents who had formerly been members of school-based management-an approach that, itself, was found to be relatively unsuccessful (Rosser and Joshi 2012). This suggests how SA approaches can be successful as intermediate steps, both intrinsically and instrumentally. ...
Abstract:
Analyzes experiences designing and implementing social accountability (SA) in fragile and conflict-affected situations (FCSs), starting from the acknowledgment that lack of accountability remains a key element of fragility and exploring whether and how SA can support stronger accountability and stronger state-society relationships. FCSs differ more than other categories of states, yet they share some similarities regarding the “macro” contextual factors influencing SA effectiveness, including (1) weak state-society relations, (2) divided political society and constraints to state action; (3) intra-society conflicts and constraints to citizen action; and (4) the importance of local engagement. Civic mobilization can prove a more daunting task, with the need to identify mobilizers able to transcend identity lines proving critical. Civil society organizations (CSOs), tribal organizations, and media institutions often serve such a role for SA interventions, but in FCS contexts it remains essential to analyze social networks carefully to identify legitimate mobilizers above and beyond their technical capacities.
... The Yudhoyono government increased spending, " channelling an additional 4.1 trillion Rupiah (US$380 million) to schools in order to reduce the fees they usually charge to parents " (Meitzner 2009, 21). However, Rosser and Joshi (2013, 182–183) demonstrate that fees have persisted due to insufficient funding of schools, top-down and non-participatory school governance, and unwillingness by state agencies to enforce the law against illegal fees. In this context of insufficient response from government, it is striking that both corruption and education are addressed in individualised ways. ...
Based on ethnographic field research conducted in Jakarta, this article argues that there is a new ideology of development in Indonesia that is cosmopolitan, nostalgic and individu- alist. To understand the new ideology, a historical sociological perspective is taken to examine the nationalist period of anti-colonial struggle, the state developmentalist period of Soeharto’s New Order, and the neoliberal period since 1998. Two interrelated arguments are made. First, the ideology of development in Indonesia has changed from earlier nationalist understandings of Pancasila to a cosmopolitan neoliberal ideology based in a nostalgic nationalism. Second, a modernist Islamic perspective on secularism and Islam both supports and is supported by this ideological shift. These arguments are illuminated through two examples of the advance of cosmo- politan neoliberal ideology: optimism and education. Optimism is focused on individual integrity to redress Indonesia’s problems with corruption. Education is offered by optimists as the escalator to development. Empirically, the Indonesia Mengajar programme of sending young university gradu- ates to teach elementary school in remote parts of the country is examined for its neo-modernisa- tionist assumptions. The article concludes that this dominant ideology abandons earlier solidaristic forms of nationalism and holds little hope for addressing the vast structural inequalities in Indonesia.
Continuing with the historical and comparative approach (discussed in Chapter 2), Chapter 3 examines the historical trajectory of the expansion of a new form of precarious work, tied to large-scale capital accumulation, amid the neoliberalisation of Indonesia’s economy. This chapter examines some developments that have conditioned the normalisation of the new form of precarious work and limited workers’ collective resistance, both under the New Order authoritarian government and after the 1997–1998 Asian financial crisis. These include the inaccessibility of social welfare, the increased casualisation of the formal sector in tandem with the large size of the informal economy. Meanwhile attempts to mobilise precarious workers (in the formal and informal sectors) to respond to the structural underpinnings of their precarity have been far from effective.
This study explores teachers' technological approaches to learning activities during a pandemic disruption. The teachers' role in solving learning activity problems during education disruption was essential. So, the expected learning outcomes can be achieved as optimally as possible. We have searched for data on book application sources and other scientific works that can be used to answer research problems. As for the review, we have analyzed the data involving data coding, interpretation, evaluating, and making conclusions to find these findings relevant to validity and reliability. After conducting an in-depth study and discussion, we finally have informed several points, including the technology approach; teachers are dominant and play a key role in implementing learning during the policy of closing schools but opening small classes remotely. We hope this finding is helpful for the following study in a relevant context. Abstrak Studi ini mengeksplorasi pendekatan teknologi guru dalam kegiatan pembelajaran di masa pandemi. Peran guru dalam memecahkan masalah kegiatan pembelajaran selama gangguan pendidikan sangat penting. Sehingga, hasil belajar yang diharapkan dapat tercapai seoptimal mungkin. Kami telah mencari data sumber aplikasi buku dan karya ilmiah lainnya yang dapat digunakan untuk menjawab permasalahan penelitian. Adapun tinjauan, kami telah menganalisis data yang melibatkan pengkodean data, interpretasi, evaluasi, dan membuat kesimpulan untuk menemukan temuan ini relevan dengan validitas dan reliabilitas. Setelah melakukan kajian dan diskusi mendalam, akhirnya kami menginformasikan beberapa hal, antara lain pendekatan teknologi; guru dominan dan berperan penting dalam pelaksanaan pembelajaran selama kebijakan menutup sekolah tetapi membuka kelas kecil dari jarak jauh. Kami berharap temuan ini bermanfaat untuk studi berikut dalam konteks yang relevan.
U radu su analizirani međunarodnopravni akti, sudske odluke međunarodnih i nacionalnih sudova i kvazisudskih tela, kao i praksa država u pogledu prava na osnovno obrazovanje. Za omogućavanje jednakog pristupa obaveznom osnovnom obrazovanju neophodno je da ono bude besplatno, što je i propisano međunarodnopravnim aktima. Međutim, rezultati istraživanja su pokazali da se ovaj standard različito tumači, a to dovodi do neujednačene prakse u državama. Ilustrativni primer su svakako bivše jugoslovenske republike, te će poseban deo rada biti posvećen analizi normativnog okvira i prakse Republike Srbije, koja i dalјe ne obezbeđuje besplatne udžbenike za osnovnu školu.
Is litigation an effective strategy for promoting fulfillment of the right to education in developing country democracies? This paper examines this question by considering the Indonesian case. We argue that litigation related to the right to education (hereafter R2E litigation) in Indonesia has promoted fulfillment of that right by precipitating policy changes protecting or enhancing poor and marginalized citizens’ access to education. At the same time, however, its impact has been contingent on several factors: (i) the availability of accessible legal pathways for defending and promoting education rights; (ii) the willingness and capacity of NGOs to act as support structures for legal mobilization; (iii) support from key sections of the judiciary; and (iv) wider political mobilization supportive of litigants’ aims. Some of these factors no longer prevail, raising doubts about the likely future effectiveness of R2E litigation in Indonesia. The key lesson of the Indonesian case, we conclude, is thus: while litigation can be an effective means for promoting fulfillment of the right to education in developing country democracies, its effectiveness will differ across time and place reflecting variation in these factors.
This Element argues that Southeast Asia's failure to develop stronger social protection systems has been, at its root, a matter of politics and power. It has reflected the political dominance within the region of predatory and technocratic elements, and the relative weakness of progressive elements. From the mid-1980s, democratisation, the emergence of political entrepreneurs seeking to mobilise mass electoral support, and the occurrence of severe economic and social crises generated pressure on governments within the region to strengthen their social protection systems. But while such developments shifted policy in a more progressive direction, they have been insufficient to produce far-reaching change. Rather, they have produced a layering effect. Innovations have built upon pre-existing policy and institutional arrangements without fundamentally altering these arrangements, ensuring that social protection systems continue to have strong conservative, productivist and predatory attributes.
Four factors hinder the quality of constitutional law teaching in Indonesia, namely learning methods, curriculum authority, learning materials, and the uncertainty of legal learning topics. This is the culprit of the low quality of law graduates who are less able to compete in the legal job market. Law lecturers in Indonesia do not reform educational methods or materials, they are more dominant in teaching and not learning. Meanwhile, on the other hand, there are no institutions that focus on evaluating the legal learning process, standardizing, and controlling it, so that it has an impact on measuring learning outcomes. Therefore, solving the problem of the weak quality of constitutional law learning in Indonesia must overcome these four obstacles.
This book is designed for the comparative study of the teaching-learning process, the quality of education, academic results of primary education of Indonesia and Uzbekistan.
Locating in the heart of Central Asia, Uzbekistan pays out an enormous portion of its budget and attention to compulsory education in the area. Meanwhile, public education is afflicted by several issues apart from excellence both in the teaching and learning process. Far in South-East Asia, Indonesia has made dramatic progress on expanding access to education over the last few decades but still, the pupil achievements remain low, however.
This monograph tried to define the current circumstance of primary education and sought possible solutions for them. Through field surveys and data analysis methods used throughout the investigation. Found data shows that improper infrastructure of government expenditure on education, low salary, and limited quota in pedagogical universities lead to a shortage of teachers in rural areas.
This chapter discusses the resumption of the central state control of education through the power of standardisation. It discusses how the central project of standardisation was justified, organised and enforced in the educational decentralisation framework. This chapter also provides an analysis of how the enforcement of the central government’s standards gave effect to the arrangement of education nationally and locally. The political autonomy of local governments has given them new powers to exercise their own local interests, which in many cases run counter to the central government’s standardising policies. This has resulted in destructuration, that is the breakdown of coordination systems between the central and local governments.
The discourse on decentralisation in developing countries is seen as a strategy in restructuring and improving economic, social and public welfare including the education sector. This idea is fundamentally in line with the goals of Education for All (EFA). The experience of Indonesia that had shifted from a strongly centralised system to a decentralised one in the early 2000s provides an interesting case. This article argues that the current decentralised system in education has seen an insignificant effect in achieving EFA. Through an extensive literature study, this article draws attention to the particular concerns of human resources, curriculum, corruption and poverty issues as contributing factors to the seemingly failing efforts in the decentralised settings, all in the light of Indonesia's historical development.
For more than a decade, the Indonesian government has sought to transform the country’s higher education institutions (HEIs), particularly its leading ones, into ‘world-class universities’. In 2006, the Education Ministry (hereafter MoEC) established a special task force to elevate ten local HEIs to world-class status (Haryanti 2010). A year later, the Education Minister, Bambang Sudibyo, announced that it had expanded the list to 50 HEIs, including 27 state and 23 private universities (Antara 2007). Recent Education Ministry five-year plans have accordingly set targets for the number of Indonesian HEIs to be ranked among the world’s top universities in global university league tables such as the Times Higher Education World University Rankings, Shanghai Jiao Tong’s Academic Ranking of World Universities, and the QS World University Rankings. MoEC’s strategic plan for 2005–2009, for instance, aimed to have four Indonesian HEIs in either the world’s top 500 universities or Asia’s top 100 (Department of National Education 2005: 52). Its strategic plan for 2010–2014 aimed to increase this to 11 HEIs in the world’s top 500 (Ministry of Education and Culture 2010: 43).
Setelah reformasi, Pemerintah Indonesia menetapkan sektor pendidikan sebagai dalam hal yang paling diprioritaskan dalam kebijakan fiskal dengan adanya mandatory spending pada sektor sebesar 20% dari total APBN. Prioritas pertama kebijakan pendidikan adalah meningkatkan school enrollment ratio di Indonesia dengan penggunaan Dana Bantuan Operasional Sekolah (BOS) dalam menunjang program wajib belajar sembilan tahun. Studi ini bertujuan untuk mengukur efisiensi anggaran BOS terhadap indikator yang merupakan tujuan dari penganggaran tersebut. Dalam mengukur efisiensi, penulis menggunakan metode Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) dengan output untuk anggaran BOS adalah Angka Partisipasi Murni (APM), nilai Ujian Nasional, angka putus sekolah, angka transisi ke jenjang berikutnya, dan persentase ruang kelas dengan kondisi baik. Studi ini juga melihat determinan dari efisiensi tersebut dengan menggunakan Tobit Estimation Technique serta variabel pertumbuhan PDRB, kualitas guru, tingkat kemiskinan, Indeks Pembangunan Manusia (IPM), dan cakupan sekolah sebagai determinan. Dengan menggunakan data 33 provinsi di Indonesia dari tahun 2014 sampai 2017, studi ini menemukan bahwa kualitas guru, IPM, dan tingkat kemiskinan memiliki pengaruh terhadap efisiensi pengunaan dana BOS.
Indonesia faces serious problems in the number, cost, quality and distribution of teachers. In recent years, its central government has introduced a range of reforms to address these problems but they have produced modest results. This paper suggests that this outcome reflects the way in which predatory political and bureaucratic elites have used the school system for decades to accumulate resources, distribute patronage, mobilize political support, and exercise political control rather than promote improved learning outcomes. Efforts to reduce teacher numbers, enhance teacher quality, and improve teacher distribution have accordingly constituted an assault on the interests of these elites, provoking powerful, if often subterranean, resistance. Broadly, reform has only occurred where the central government has employed policy instruments that have disciplined local governments and maintained a commitment to these instruments in the face of resistance. The paper concludes by assessing the implications for Indonesian education.
In this empirically rich collection of essays, a team of leading international scholars explore the way that economic transformation is sustained and challenged by everyday practices across Southeast Asia. Drawing together a body of interdisciplinary scholarship, the authors explore how the emergence of more marketized forms of economic policy-making in Southeast Asia impacts everyday life. The book's twelve chapters address topics such as domestic migration, trade union politics in Myanmar, mining in the Philippines, halal food in Singapore, Islamic finance in Malaysia, education reform in Indonesia, street vending in Malaysia, regional migration between Malaysia, Indonesia and Cambodia, and Southeast Asian domestic workers in Hong Kong. This collection not only enhances understandings of the everyday political economies at work in specific Southeast Asian sites, but makes a major theoretical contribution to the development of an everyday political economy approach in which perspectives from developing economies and non-Western actors are taken seriously.
Policies aimed at both reducing the costs associated with schooling (particularly through fee-free education) and decentralising responsibility for education delivery have become a central part of international education doctrine. This article draws on the ‘politics of scale’ literature to highlight how these education reforms are contested at different scales, in turn leading to uneven administrative and material outcomes. It examines education policy reforms in Papua New Guinea, which have – contra international trends – sidelined non-state actors and strengthened the state’s role in managing education services. National fee-free education policy has been contested at different administrative scales. Church administrators have rallied (without much success) at national directives; subnational administrators and politicians have had greater success, rolling back some aspects of national policy; while local-level schools have employed their own tactics to resist national fee-free education policy. In turn, this case study highlights how fee-free educational policy shapes and is shaped by conflict at multiple administrative scales. The article’s findings have implications for debates about the relationship between fee-free education and decentralisation policies.
There are multiple school categorisations in the South African schooling system. One such categorisation is fee paying and no fee paying schools. This qualitative study explores the leadership challenges of principals in fee paying and no fee paying schools. Four schools were purposively sampled and four school principals were interviewed. Two principals were from fee paying schools and two were from no fee paying schools. Document reviews were used to supplement data generated from interviews. The findings revealed that delays in compensation for school fee exemptions and insufficient resources and infrastructure are some of the challenges school principals had to deal with. Similarly in no fee paying schools, insufficient funding and funding delays and poor resourcing are some of the challenges school principals had to contend with. The study recommends that penalties be incurred for delays in the transfer of funds and the policy of ring fencing allocations be revisited.
Do justiciable legal frameworks for the protection of human rights (JLFPHR) promote the realisation of human rights? This paper considers this question by examining a set of recent Indonesian court cases related to the right to education. It argues that citizens in these cases successfully used Constitutional provisions related to education rights to challenge government policies that undermined these rights because: (i) they encountered judges sympathetic to their cause; (ii) they had access to support structures for legal mobilisation (SSLMs); and (iii) they engaged in simultaneous political mobilisation that created a broader political climate conducive to judicial activism and policy change. As such, it is argued, these cases confirm comparative findings that judicial activism and SSLMs are important preconditions for JLFPHR to contribute to the realisation of human rights through courts, at least in contexts where court cases are costly; and point to the important role that political mobilisation can play in creating a broader political climate favourable to judicial activism and policy change. In policy terms, the implication is that JLFPHR need to be accompanied by efforts to nurture SSLMs, judicial activism and strategies that blend legal and political mobilisation.
Analysis of the role of courts in shaping access to justice in Indonesia has emphasised the role of judges and the incentives created for them by courts' institutional design. Alternatively, it has focused on individual justice-seekers and their capacities to choose between alternative pathways through the legal repertoire. In this paper, we suggest that ‘support structures for legal mobilisation’ (SSLMs) have also played an important role in shaping access to justice by influencing both the potential for legal mobilisation and the type of justice sought. In making this argument, we focus on a recent Constitutional Court case on ‘international standard schools’. In this case, a group of parents were able to mobilise for legal action only because NGOs provided the required technical expertise and financial resources while the central involvement of an anti-corruption NGO in the SSLM shifted the focus from parents' concerns about discrimination to corruption.
Background: The high incidence of young people dropping out of school prior to completing secondary schooling remains a nationwide problem in Indonesia. While it is commonly assumed that early school-leavers will become child workers, in fact little is known about their transition to adulthood.
Objective: Using retrospective data from a sample of 799 young adults (ages 20-34) in Greater Jakarta who dropped out of school by age 16, this paper investigates their patterns of activity and employment in the adolescent years following their exit from the school system, the timing and patterns of reaching various markers of adulthood, and their current life situations.
Results: Less than a quarter of early school-leavers worked in the immediate year following school exit. Instead about 30% neither worked nor studied between the ages of 12-18. The likelihood of experiencing idleness was highest at age 13 and was relatively higher for females than males. Among those with early work experience the majority worked in the manufacturing industry, as domestic servants, or as informal traders. Early school-leavers left their parental home, married, and became parents at a younger age compared to those who left school at ages 17-19.
Conclusions: Female early school-leavers are likely to spend a longer time economically and educationally inactive during their formative years, progress faster to their markers of adulthood, and are less likely to return to school, relative to their male counterparts. Qualitative insights suggest that adolescent dropouts who enter employment early are better off in their young adulthood than those who experience inactivity prior to adulthood.
Over the last two decades, the idea that citizen engagement and participation can contribute to improved governance and development outcomes has been mainstreamed in development policy and discourse. Yet despite the normative beliefs that underpin this approach, the impact of participation on improved democratic and developmental outcomes has proved difficult to assess. Where previous research studies have attempted to demonstrate impact, they tend to be limited to single interventions, a small number of country contexts or by various conceptual and methodological constraints.
In this paper, we report on a meta-case study analysis of a ten-year research programme on citizenship, participation and accountability which analysed a non-randomised sample of 100 research studies of four types of citizen engagement in 20 countries. By mapping the observable effects of citizen participation through a close reading of these studies, we created a typology of four democratic and developmental outcomes, including (a) the construction of citizenship, (b) the strengthening of practices of participation, (c) the strengthening of responsive and accountable states, and (d) the development of inclusive and cohesive societies.
We find that citizen participation produces positive effects across these outcome types, though in each category there are also examples of negative outcomes of citizen participation. We also find that these outcomes vary according to the type of citizen engagement and to political context. These findings have important implications for the design of and support for participatory programmes meant to improve state responsiveness and effectiveness.
In March and October 2005, the Government of Indonesia reduced fuel subsidy and allocated part of the funds to the BOS (Bantuan Operasional Sekolah-School Operational Assistance) Program, which commenced in July 2005. This program is provided for schools at the primary and junior high school levels and is intended to reduce the burden on the community, especially the poor, of the costs of education after the BBM (fuel) price rose. Different from the previous PKPS-BBM that had been provided in the form of BKM scholarships for students from poor family background, BOS was provided for schools. BOS funds were allocated on the basis of the number of students, with an amount of Rp235,000 per student per annum at the primary school (SD) level and Rp324,500 per student per annum at the junior high school (SMP) level. The APBN allocation to BOS funds for the period of July–December 2005 was Rp5.136 trillion, or an approximate eightfold increase over the BKM budget for primary and junior high schools in the period of January-June 2005. This report was written on the basis of a rapid appraisal by The SMERU Research Institute in an effort to understand the implementation of BOS Program. This initiative was carried out in order to provide the lessons learned for the planning and improvement of the program’s implementation. The study was conducted between February and May 2006. The fieldwork was conducted over approximately three weeks between February and March 2006 in ten samples of kabupaten/kota distributed across five provinces, namely Kabupaten North Tapanuli and Kota Pematang Siantar in North Sumatra, Kabupaten Lebak and Kota Cilegon in Banten, Kabupaten Malang and Kota Pasuruan in East Java, Kabupaten North Minahasa and Kota Manado in North Sulawesi, and Kabupaten Central Lombok and Kota Mataram in West Nusa Tenggara (NTB). This study adopts a qualitative approach. The collection of data and information was undertaken through in-depth interviews and focus group discu
Rigged calls for tender, embezzlement of funds, illegal registration fees, academic fraud - there is no lack of empirical data illustrating the diverse forms that corruption can take in the education sector. Surveys suggest that fund leakage from education ministries to schools can be huge bribes and payoffs in teacher recruitment and promotion lower the quality of the pool of teachersand illegal payments for school entrance contribute to low enrolment and high drop-out rates. This book presents conclusions drawn from IIEP's research into ethics and corruption in education. It aims to build awareness among decision-makers and education managers of the importance of combating corruption, to provide them with tools to detect and assess corruption problems, and to guide them in formulating strategies to curb malpractices. After defining the key concepts of corruption, transparency, accountability and ethics, it identifies the main opportunities for corruption in education. It describes tools that can be used to assess corruption problems - such as perception and tracking surveys. Lessons are drawn from strategies used worldwide to improve transparency and accountability in educational management. The authors bring these together in a list of recommendations for policy-makers and educational managers. They argue that transparent regulatory systems, greater accountability through strengthened management capacity, and enhanced ownership of the management process can help build corruption-free education systems.
Incl. bibliographical references
Insufficient resources and inadequate public expenditure management often prevent governments in low-income countries from providing quality basic education free of charge. User payments by parents are an alternative means of financing basic education. This paper assesses how user payments affect educational opportunities and quality of education for children of poor families in low-income countries. Conditions are identified under which user payments can or cannot improve educational outcomes. User payments, whether taking the form of compulsory benefit taxation or voluntary user fees, are a temporary solution and second-best compared with free-access, publicly financed quality education that is consistent with macroeconomic stability.
The mainstream view of development posits that if economic growth is maximized, the levels of poverty will be reduced, and this will result in increases in welfare (in a more or less automatic fashion). Thus, much policy making occurs under a leader/follower hierarchy model, where macroeconomic policy is determined first, while social policy is derivative and left to address the social consequences of economic policies (Atkinson 1999). This separation of the ‘economic’ from the ‘social’ discourse is inherent to the Washington consensus and the neoclassical theory which underpins it. Moreover, under this view, only certain policies ensure economic growth. In contrast, social policy can and should be understood as ‘collective interventions in the economy to influence the access to and the incidence of adequate and secure livelihoods and income’ (Mkandawire 2004: 1).
L'A. examine la divergence entre la rhetorique de reforme de l'enseignement au Bresil et la realite educationnelle; il montre que le droit a l'education de base pour tous n'est pas respecte; et que les facteurs geographiques, socio-economiques et politiques entravent la realisation de l'egalite des chances
This article explores to what extent to local pro-reform actors matter in Indonesia through the prism of anti-corruption campaigns in the country's regions. I argue that the rash of anti-corruption campaigns and related trials involving legislative members, especially from mid-2004 onward, can be attributed neither to the resources lavished on anti-corruption organizations based in Jakarta, nor to the popularity of President Yudhoyono's anti-corruption rhetoric. Instead, it can be traced to a particular anti-corruption campaign that began in earnest in 2002 in Padang, West Sumatra. Using a multi-dimensional approach, a small group of activists relentlessly pursued their newly elected provincial legislators to be accountable to their democratic mandates and as important, to respect the rule of law pursuant to new national anti-corruption legislation. The guilty verdicts of May 2004 galvanized similar groups across the country to investigate their respective legislative bodies. This exemplary case of societal accountability also demonstrated the leverage activists can gain over local politicians when they forge coalitions with other elite actors, especially those in Jakarta. I further explore two anti-corruption cases in the province of West Kalimantan to place post-Padang developments in their proper perspective. If hopes were raised that regional anti-corruption movements–based on the Padang model–might accomplish more than sensational trials but help consolidate democracy at the regional level by holding elected officials accountable, these two examples show how fleeting these expectations might be. The trials that took place but which produced no convictions resulted from the fallout of local political tussles, and not from local civil society organizations galvanized by the ideals of transparency and good governance.
Much commentary on Indonesian politics since the fall of President Suharto in May 1998 has suggested that Indonesia's political system has remained just as exclusionary as it was prior to his fall, despite becoming much more democratic and decentralised. In contrast to this view, we argue that Indonesia's political system has become more inclusive, if only somewhat more so. The fall of Suharto and the subsequent process of democratisation have removed key obstacles to organisation by poor and disadvantaged groups and their NGO allies, making it easier for them to engage in collective action aimed at achieving pro-poor policy change. By making attainment of political office dependent on the support of the voting public, many of whom are poor and disadvantaged, these developments have also created an incentive for politicians to pursue policy changes that favour these groups or at least that appeal to them. At the same time, however, we argue that poor and disadvantaged groups have not become major players in the policy-making process. Despite the fall of Suharto and democratisation, these groups continue to lack the resources possessed by other participants in the policy-making process. Whereas the politico-bureaucrats and well-connected business groups have been able to exercise influence over policy by buying support within representative bodies such as parliament and mobile capital controllers, the IFIs and Western governments have been able to exercise influence by virtue of their structural power, poor and disadvantaged groups have had to rely on less potent ways of exercising influence such as holding demonstrations, engaging in lobbying activity and participating in public debates. We illustrate these points with reference to two policy issues: land reform and mining in protected forests. The article concludes by considering the future prospects for inclusive policy-making in Indonesia.
Three decades of authoritarian rule in Indonesia came to a sudden end in 1998. The collapse of the Soeharto regime was accompanied by massive economic decline, widespread rioting, communal conflict, and fears that the nation was approaching the brink of disintegration. Although the fall of Soeharto opened the way towards democratization, conditions were by no means propitious for political reform. This book asks how political reform could proceed despite such unpromising circumstances. It examines electoral and constitutional reform, the decentralization of a highly centralized regime, the gradual but incomplete withdrawal of the military from its deep political involvement, the launching of an anti-corruption campaign, and the achievement of peace in two provinces that had been devastated by communal violence and regional rebellion. © 2010 Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore. All rights reserved.
The fall of Soeharto's long-entrenched authoritarian New Order regime in 1998 raised hopes among many about a transition in Indonesia to a liberal democratic system of politics. However, Indonesia's new democratic institutions have been captured and appropriated by predatory interests, many of which were nurtured and incubated in the New Order. These have merely now reconstituted and reinvented themselves in Indonesia's new democracy. The article assesses these developments in the light of many of the assumptions of the still influential and growing 'democratic transitions' literature and on the basis of case studies in two Indonesian provinces, Yogyakarta and North Sumatra. These show that gradual reform since the fall of Soeharto has allowed the rise in political fortunes of those formerly entrenched in the lower levels of the New Order's formerly vast system of patronage, including its political entrepreneurs and henchmen. On the other hand, those social forces that were marginalized under the New Order, for example organized labour, remain politically excluded.
Several developing countries have recently introduced policies supporting universal basic free education (UFBE). Experience suggests such policies often fail to increase access and quality of education, and illegal fees are widely prevalent. The literature identifies several reasons including the lack of replacement funding in place of fees and the loss of quality due to overcrowding and subsequent high drop-out rates. This paper, using evidence from Indonesia's experience, argues that the underlying problem is political. We suggest that fee-free education is an attainable goal, but only if pro-UFBE coalitions are empowered to influence policy, demand accountability and seek redress against illegal fees.
Including abstract, tabl., bibl. The goal of Education for All (EFA) is in jeopardy, and the cause is widely perceived to be a lack of political will. But we lack an accurate definition of political will. In this article, I offer a definition that determines beforehand whether a government will have political will. In contrast to current academic work and popular discourse, which looks for political will in democratic institutions or the commitment of leaders, I argue that a government has the political will to invest in primary education if doing so helps it to stay in power. The article demonstrates that providing primary education helps a government stay in power in two specific circumstances. The first is when the government needs the support of the poor, which only occurs when the poor have help organising from a 'political entrepreneur'. The second is when employers need large numbers of skilled workers. In these two circumstances, the government will have the political will to invest in primary education. This formula is successful in predicting government commitments to primary education over a half-century or more in three very different developing countries: Taiwan, Ghana, and Brazil. In each, the article presents evidence that periods of commitment to primary education are the result either of successful political entrepreneurship of the poor or of employer conditions. The results suggest a new direction for EFA that is more challenging but potentially more successful: directing resources toward those countries whose governments currently have political will, and encouraging it in those that do not.
Incl. bibl., abstract Since Independence in 1963, Kenya has launched three Free Primary Education programmes: the first in 1974, the second in 1979 and the most recent in 2003. Using historical data, this paper first outlines each initiative in turn, and discusses why, in the case of the earlier initiatives, impressive initial gains in improved access proved difficult to sustain. Then in the final section, insights gained from a recent micro-level case study of the impact of the third Free Primary Education programme in nine schools are used to explore three access-related issues, and their implications for current and future policy.
There is increasing interest in the issue of informal payments for health care in low- and middle-income countries. Emerging evidence suggests that the phenomenon is both diverse, including many variants from cash payments to in-kind contributions and from gift giving to informal charging, and widespread, reported from countries in at least three continents. However, cross-national research is hampered by the lack of consensus among researchers on the definition of informal payments, and the definitions that have been proposed are unable to incorporate all forms of the phenomenon that have been described so far. This article aims to overcome this limitation by proposing a new definition based on the concept of entitlement for services. First, the various forms of informal payment observed in practice are reviewed briefly. Then, some of the proposed definitions are discussed, pointing out that none of the distinctive characteristics implied by these definitions, including illegality, informality, and corruption, is adequate to capture all varieties of the phenomenon. Next, an alternative definition is formulated, which identifies the distinctive feature common to all forms of informal payments as something that is contributed in addition to the terms of entitlement. Then, the boundaries implied by this definition are explored and, finally, the implications for research and policy making are discussed with reference to the lessons developed countries can learn from the experiences of transitional countries.
Wapres: Gaji Guru Seharusnya Masuk Komponen 20 Persen
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