Reasons Behind the Poor State of Education in Indonesia

The Reasons Behind Indonesia's Poor Education

Every three years since 2000, Indonesia and many other countries have taken the PISA test. The most recent PISA test was held in 2018. PISA or the Programme for International Student Assessment, organised by the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) has only just published the results of the 2018 PISA test. Indonesia's PISA score is relatively low compared with other countries. Three aspects determine the total PISA score: reading, mathematics and science. Reading is for learning, mathematics and logic are for thinking, and scientific literacy is for processing new things. In all three aspects, Indonesia's score fell from its previous PISA test. As a result, Indonesia is now ranked in the 70s out of 78 countries in these three aspects, or in other words about 10th from the bottom out of nearly 80 countries. PISA was created in the past because countries realised the importance of evaluating education. PISA does not try to test students' educational achievement through things they can merely memorise or recall. So the focus is not on rote learning, but on seeing where students are ready to face life. This is because the organisers of PISA realise that memorising is not enough to live life well. There are many intellectuals, but the problem is that their skills do not match what industry needs, which is why there is so much unemployment. It is as if what we learn at school is "not used when we want to work in industry", while on the other hand industry is developing very fast.

What does it mean when a country's PISA score is low? When a country's PISA score is low, it can be said that graduating from formal education does little to help prepare people for life. After graduating, students in Indonesia are not well prepared to enter the world of industry or work and to contribute to society. The unemployment rate among school graduates, whether from vocational schools or universities, is quite high. One reason is the skills gap between what industry needs and what we learn at school. This will be a problem, even though there are indeed counterarguments against PISA. But from this indicator we can at least see that the approach of Indonesian education needs to be improved. The solution, of course, is to evaluate the current education system and replace it with a better one.

Perhaps the school curriculum has not yet taught the things that are important for our lives in the right way. We need a good curriculum and we also need to evaluate teachers so that they can teach properly. However, we cannot entirely blame curriculum makers and teachers. Making a curriculum is not as easy as turning over a hand. On top of that there is bureaucracy, political interests, pros and cons from the public, and so on. In the end, the adoption of new things becomes slow in Indonesian education. That is why campuses and schools are less quick to adapt. The result is that we learn, but what we learn is not very relevant to the demands of the times and is also less relevant to what we need in life. As for teachers, perhaps we all know that many teachers today may find it hard to obtain adequate facilities and pay so that they can teach well. That is why the solution is the involvement of everyone so that education in Indonesia can advance further. This starts with the government, society, teachers, and also the private sector. Private parties can be more flexible and quicker in creating new products that benefit society. This flexibility and speed is what has made many private companies disrupt existing systems around the world. Companies such as online taxis, online motorcycle taxis, e-commerce and many more have made big changes to the landscape of development in Indonesia and the world, and in the end, if all elements move together, we can make a big impact for Indonesia.

Newspaper publisher: Mata Banua

Link : https://matabanua.co.id/2021/06/28/e-paper-harian-pagi-mata-banua-senin-28-juni-2021/