Managing Basic Education

Problem addressed and inputs provided  

MBE has been working since February 2003 to develop local government capacity to provide and manage basic education and, in particular, to address the long standing problems of poor allocation and management of resources. These resources include teachers and facilities as well as operational funding for schools.  Additionally, the poor quality of education which children receive in the majority of schools in Indonesia is being improved with MBE assistance.

To address these challenges, MBE, now active in 23 districts, has focused its efforts at the school level targeting 20 primary and junior secondary, secular and religious schools in each district. A team in each district has been trained to develop adequate and equitable funding plans to support school-based management of resources including the collection and analysis of school data, more rational teacher deployment, and improved use/maintenance of school buildings. This work has included training (provided by MBE local facilitators) for school principals, school committee members and teachers in each school to develop and implement individual school development plans focused on quality improvement. These plans include community involvement in school management, developing transparent accounting systems at the school level and training teachers to implement active, creative, joyful and effective learning. Activities have included training workshops, study visits to see good practice in action, teacher exchanges and on-the-job training. All activities have included a wide variety of stakeholders:  legislative, executive, professional and community. MBE has worked closely with other donor Basic Education Programs (UNICEF, UNESCO, NZAID and AusAID) to develop shared approaches and shared training materials. Coordination meetings with these programs and the GOI have taken place at national and provincial levels to ensure continuity and consistency between programs. 

Accomplishments and Challenges

MBE has achieved notable progress during the past year and wide dissemination of MBE best practices has occurred. Using their own resources, the local governments of the first nine districts (where 182 schools received direct MBE assistance) have disseminated various MBE models of school practice to an estimated 2,100 additional schools. In fact, these nine districts now have budgeted specific funds to continue supporting MBE dissemination. These districts have selected, trained, and paid additional teams of facilitators (up to five teams in one district) to implement dissemination activities. The fact that MBE schools continue to receive large numbers of visitors from schools outside the program indicates on-going, active interest in the MBE program and a healthy desire for change.

MBE is now giving direct assistance to 450 primary and junior secondary schools serving 140,000 students and 10,000 teachers. The nine districts from the first 2 years of the program have drawn up education plans covering at least two sub-districts and are currently implementing these plans. These plans aim to reduce the high level of waste in the use of resources, especially for buildings and teachers. Plans from 5 districts included merging 58 small primary schools and forming multi-grade schools in rural areas, where mergers are not practicable. The plans also proposed the redeployment of 97 teachers and principals. In the district of Pacitan, officials have decided to form 34 multi-grade schools to better meet community education needs.  Because of this, MBE has provided training assistance on multi-grade teaching. The 11 districts that joined the program in May 2005 are currently drawing up their rationalization plans. Districts in Aceh and Jakarta joined the program in late 2005/early 2006.

In FY06, all 23 MBE districts will extend the coverage of data collection and planning to additional and, in many cases, all sub-districts within the district. The target districts continue to implement their plans using their own resources (supported by workshops and MBE consultant visits to review progress and discuss and solve problems encountered). While implementing the plans can be a slow process owing to political difficulties in merging schools and moving staff, it is estimated that approximately 10% of primary school facilities can be taken out of commission in many districts through school rationalization, thereby achieving substantial savings. Furthermore, while teachers’ salaries consume up to 90% of local education budgets in many districts, many schools have excess teachers while others have shortages of teachers. Substantial savings are accruing by making better use of the teachers available. 

All target districts have developed transparent formulae to fund their schools more adequately and equitably.  So far, nine districts have implemented formula funding. Under these schemes the district provides increased funding to schools to manage directly rather than being managed (or often mismanaged) at the district level.  Distribution of funds is based on objective criteria, mainly the number of students in each school. A list of the amounts distributed to each school is made publicly available, creating demand for transparent management of funds at the school level. This has been very well received by political and professional stakeholders and is timely given the rapid development of an accountable democracy at all levels in the country. It is expected that all MBE districts will be implementing formula funding within the coming year and that all districts will hold reviews of their funding formulae and mechanisms involving relevant stakeholders, with a view to improving them.

Over 90% of the 182 directly assisted schools in the first nine districts have worked together with local school committees to formulate school development plans with integrated budgets and accounts, which in most schools are displayed in a public place for all to see. This openness has encouraged an increase in community participation in almost all schools in the form of physical or monetary assistance.  Funding to MBE schools rose by 14% in the first year of the program. The formation of parents’ groups in an estimated 20% of primary schools support teachers by improving the classroom environment and, in many cases (especially in the early grades of the primary school), parents take turns to work as assistants to the teacher in the classroom.

Parents have expressed general satisfaction with their increased involvement in schools and feel they understand the schools better, while teachers feel more accountable to the parents. This is expressed in better lesson preparation, time-keeping and improvements in the classroom environment, which have transformed many schools. Most teachers in the MBE primary schools and many in the MBE junior secondary schools have adopted more active and participatory learning methods and mount attractive displays of children’s work in the classroom and around the school. Improvements have been noted equally in conventional and religious schools. Many MBE schools have become more popular with parents and shown increased enrollment (with many parents moving their children into the MBE schools – both madrasahs and conventional schools).  There has also been improved student performance documented both by MBE-project administered tests and by district-wide tests administered to 6th graders. As a result of the school’s mark on the 6th grade test, each school in the sub-district is ranked for achievement. In Tulakan, a sub-district of Pacitan district, four of the five MBE target public primary schools are ranked in the top five (out of 48 schools) after participating for 2 years in the MBE program!

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