UNICEF, Jakarta, Indonesia : Review of Satap Schools

A. Background and context 1. Education, particularly basic education (grades1-9), has been considered critical to promoting national economic growth and social well being1. Three factors that con-tribute to the above are: (i) Education increases human capital inherent in a labor force and thus increases productivity. It also increases capacity for working with others and builds community consensus to support national development. (ii) Education can in-crease the innovative capacity of a community to support social and economic growth—use of new technologies, products and services to promote growth and wellbeing. (iii) Education can facilitate knowledge transfer needed to understand the social and eco-nomic innovations and new processes, practices and values. Cognizant of the above benefits of education, the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) and the Education for All (EFA) declarations advocating universal basic education were formulated and ratified by UN member countries. 2. Achieving universal primary education (grade 6) may not be sufficient to maxim-ize the above noted socio-economic and cultural benefits. There is general consensus that basic literacy and numeracy up to grade 9 are essential foundational blocks for any good education system to support national development. Basic Education provides an educational achievement threshold that ensures the learning is retained. To achieve this, the donor partner led interventions and the UN declarations such as the MDG goals have sought universal access to basic education (grades 1-9). As many countries progress towards achieving the universal access targets, recent research evidence suggests that we need more than just access to basic education to impact on the na-tional development. Measuring basic education completion cycle, gross enrolment rate (GER) and participation rate etc., has to now include a focus on quality and relevance of the education2. 3. While the above research finding is generally accepted by the Government of In-donesia (GoI), unlike many other developing countries, Indonesia is geographically and linguistically complex and has the fourth largest education sector in the world. It has over 3000 islands, 17,000 ethnic groups and it takes as long as 7 hours to travel from east to west of the country and has multiple time differences. The education system has six years of primary education (grades 1-6), 3 years of junior secondary education (grades 7-9) and three years of senior secondary education (grades 10-12). Therefore, applying the findings of the above cited research in a country like Indonesia is a chal-lenge. Nevertheless, since the adoption of the National Education Law (2003)3 the GoI has made significant progress in improving access to and quality of basic education (grades 1-9). The 2011/12 national education statistics show the primary education (grades 1-6) completion rate was 99.3%, the net enrolment rate (NER) was 95.4% and the GER was 115.4%. This is a significant achievement considering the complexities faced within Indonesia. This increase in the primary education sub-sector, however, has not flowed onto the Junior Secondary School (JSS) education. The transition from pri-mary to JSS is still short of the GoI targets. In 2012, there were 146,826 primary schools feeding into 33,668 junior secondary schools. The transition rate from primary to secondary in 2011/12 was 78%. When considering district or sub-district level data the transition in poor districts could be less than the aggregated national rate. Poverty and lack of parents’ education, confounded by opportunity cost, are major obstacles to transitioning to JSS4. 4. Table 1 presents a summary of GoI initiatives to accelerate the transition to JSS. GoI, with assistance from the donor community, has built 2465 new regular JSS, mak-ing the total number of regular JSS 33,668. In addition, 57,825 new classrooms have been added to existing regular JSS. Also, in rural and remote areas 4136 Satu-Atap5 (SATAP) schools were built to increase access to JSS. These SATAP schools are the focus of this study as they provide education opportunities to the most marginalized, ru-ral, remote children who otherwise would not have access to JSS and consequently not complete basic education.

Community engagement for disaster resilience : flood risk management in Jakarta, Indonesia

Understanding dynamics of interactions between community groups and government agencies is crucial to improve community resilience for flood risk reduction through effective community engagement strategies. Overall, a variety of approaches are available, however they are limited in their application. Based on research of a case study in Kampung Melayu Village in Jakarta, further complexity in engaging community emerges in planning policy which requires the relocation of households living in floodplains. This complexity arises in decision-making processes due to barriers to communication. This obstacle highlights the need for a simplified approach for an effective flood risk management which will be further explored in this paper. Qualitative analyses will be undertaken following semi-structured interviews conducted with key actors within government agencies, non-governmental organisations (NGOs), and representatives of communities. The analyses involve investigation of barriers and constraints on community engagement in flood risk management, particularly relevant to collaboration mechanism, perception of risk, and technical literacy to flood risk. These analyses result in potential redirection of community consultation strategies to lead to a more effective collaboration among stakeholders in the decision-making processes. As a result, greater effectiveness in plan implementation of flood risk management potentially improves disaster resilience in the future.

Citra Perempuan Indonesia dalam Iklan Produk Provider [published in Indonesian]

Runtuhnya rezim sentralistik Orde Baru mengubah konstelasi sosial politik di Indonesia. Persoalan-persoalan perempuan yang ditabukan pada zaman Orde Baru mulai diberikan ruang untuk didiskusikan secara terbuka. Istilah pemberdayaan perempuan, perempuan di parlemen, kuota untuk perempuan, kepemimpinan perempuan, ataupun independensi perempuan mulai sering terdengar. Bukan berarti riuh suara pembebasan itu yang mendominasi lapangan sebab upaya pemenjaraan tubuh perempuan meriah juga di era reformasi. Saat ini upaya kontrol terhadap tubuh perempuan dilakukan oleh sipil berjubah agama. Lihat misalnya di layar TV, sangat terang-terangan Front Pembela Islam (FPI) terekam menyerbu tempat hiburan malam dan melakukan razia kemaksiatan di tempat mahasiswa indekos. Tidak jarang kelompok sipil mengatasnamakan organisasi agama tertentu mengeluarkan pernyataan dihadapan wartawan dengan mencela beberapa artis dangdut perempuan atau selebriti perempuan lainnya yang dikenal berpakaian “seksi”.

Special Issue : Media/Politics in Indonesia [Editors]

Emma Baulch and Julian Millie are editors of this special issue.

‘Pop Melayu vs. Pop Indonesia: Marketeers, producers and new interpretations of a genre into the 2000s’ in Sonic Modernities in Southeast Asia Leiden: Brill pp. 187- 215

Kangen Band, as an example of reclaiming of the derisive term kampungan. In it, I argue that this reclaiming represents an interesting case of genre manipulation, and consider what this can reveal about how Indonesian pop genres are constituted, what they ‘are’ and what they ‘do’. In so doing, I seek to rework existing scholarship relating to Indonesian pop genres and modernity, as well as interrogate some broader theories of genre. In this essay, I extend the argument that Indonesian pop genres are not purely technical categories, they touch on myths of class and nation (Wallach 2008; Weintraub 2010; Yampolsky 1989. As we shall see, in the New Order period, pop music genres reached out to these myths by positioning themselves variously vis-à-vis the capital city, Jakarta. Such positioning, achieved through use of the terms gedongan (a term that strives to infer refinement by stressing the non-masses’ central position in the urban environment) and kampungan (a term that strives to enforce subalterns’ marginal position in relation to the metropolis, see also the previous contribution by Weintraub), continues to haunt the constitution of genre in the post-New Order period, but in novel ways. These novel ways, I argue, may be seen to result from industrial transformation and new systems of knowledge production.

Politics and the Press in Indonesia : Understanding an Evolving Political Culture

This book explores the evolving political culture in Indonesia, by discussing the country's dominant political philosophies, then showing how those philosophies affect the working lives of ordinary Indonesian citizens. It focuses in particular on the working lives of news journalists, a group that occupies a strategic social and political position.

Secular and religious moral grounds resonating across state schools in Indonesia

This paper describes moral education in Indonesia, more particularly, how teachers have implemented the Character Education policy issued by the Ministry of Education and Culture (MOEC) in 2010. This policy required teachers to instil certain values in every lesson, including EFL lessons, to contribute towards building a shared national moral character. Drawing on Durkheim's distinction between secular and religious morality, this paper considers how state schools accommodated and promoted this ‘rational moral education' or secular morality (Durkheim, 1925) in government schools, and how it interacted with religious moral education. This paper uses Bernstein's concepts of pedagogic discourse, instructional and regulative discourses to analyse how teachers have recontextualised this policy in the micro pedagogic settings of their EFL classes. Three types of data were collected for this study: interviews, class observations and teachers' lesson plans. In this way, four EFL teachers working in state schools were interviewed on two occasions and three of their classes were observed. The first interview identified teachers' beliefs and perceptions regarding the Character Education policy. Their classroom and lesson plans were observed to augment this information. Then the final interview asked about the teacher's thinking behind their actions in the observed classes. Since character education was issued within the broader frame of school based curriculum that offered schools and teachers more choices to develop the local curriculum and its intent, the analysis will focus on what moral premises were evident in their school and classes, and how such morality was transmitted through the EFL lessons. The conclusion suggests that teachers' implementation of moral education in their classes was dominated by their school communities and the teachers' own preferred value of religiosity. Such value played out in the classes through both the regulative discourse and the instructional discourse.

Book review: Politics and the media in twenty-first century Indonesia: Decade of democracy

This is the third (but first edited) volume in Sen and Hill’s corpus on Indonesian media. An anthology built from contributions to a 2006 workshop, it is necessarily more fragmented than the editors’ earlier monographs. While this fragmented character helps to evoke a fractured context, it also makes for unwieldiness...

EFL teachers' professional dilemmas with moral curriculum reform in Indonesia

This project explored how EFL teachers working in different sectors in Indonesia experienced moral education reform. Teachers working in either state schools or Islamic private schools were interviewed and their classes were observed. The thesis indicated that systemic investment in teachers' professionalism contributed to teachers' emerging dilemmas and their resolutions. Teachers in the better resourced state sector reported more dilemmas related to the implementation of the reform and resolved these dilemmas by using professional judgement, while teachers in the less resourced sector reported dilemmas related to their context and failed to implement the curriculum.

Exploring an innovative educational approach to facilitating student nurses' clinical-reasoning skills in North Sulawesi Province, Indonesia

This study examined the effect of an educational intervention utilizing principles of cognitive apprenticeship on students’ ability to apply clinical reasoning skills within the context of a purpose-built clinical vignette. A quasi-experimental, non-equivalent control-group design was used to evaluate the effect of the educational intervention on students’ accuracy, inaccuracy and self-confidence in clinical reasoning. This study makes an important contribution to nursing education by providing evidence to understand how best to facilitate nursing students’ development of clinical reasoning.

Using global formulary apportionment for international profit allocation: The case of Indonesia's mining industry

My thesis examined an alternative approach, referred to as the unitary taxation approach to the allocation of profit, which arises from the notion that as a multinational group exists as a single economic entity, it should be taxed as one taxable unit. The plausibility of a unitary taxation regime achieving international acceptance and agreement is highly contestable due to its implementation issues, and economic and political feasibility. Using a case-study approach focusing on Freeport-McMoRan and Rio Tinto's mining operations in Indonesia, this thesis compares both tax regimes against the criteria for a good tax system - equity, efficiency, neutrality and simplicity. This thesis evaluates key issues that arise when implementing a unitary taxation approach with formulary apportionment based on the context of mining multinational firms in Indonesia.

Social Audit Regulation Within the NGO Sector: Practices of NGOs Operating in Bangladesh and Indonesia

Social audit is one of those important mechanisms for strengthening NGOs’ accountability to poor communities (as NGOs’ key beneficiaries). However, conducting social audits within the NGO sector often rests on the individual interests and priorities of donors or NGOs themselves, effectively resulting in self-selection bias, and limiting the effectiveness and usefulness of social audits as a control and evaluation mechanism. The purpose of this chapter is to identify the prevalence, scale, and scope of social audits within the NGO sector, particularly NGOs engaging in microenterprise development programs. Accordingly, this study examined 20 NGOs operating in two countries - Bangladesh and Indonesia. Data were collected from publicly available sources and in-depth interviews with senior executives of the participating NGOs. Further, 10 interviews were conducted with a small sample of beneficiaries (individuals or groups from four of the participating NGOs) in order to gain an understanding of beneficiaries’ perceptions of the NGOs’ social audit mechanism. The findings reveal a range of approaches to social audit among NGOs, as well as the usefulness and limitations of this mechanism for strengthening NGO accountability, particularly to beneficiaries. Findings highlight that within the NGOs investigated the conduct of social audits remained voluntary and was strongly dependant on donors’ requirements. As social audit regulation within the NGO sector is minimal, the findings provide regulators with valuable guidance for better understanding the value of social audit as a mechanism to strengthen accountability of the NGO sector, particularly accountability to beneficiaries.

Performance-based contracting for roads – Experiences of Australia and Indonesia

Many countries over the last decade, have used performance-based contracting (PBC) to manage and maintain roads. The implementation of PBC provides additional benefits for the government/public such as cost savings and improved conditions of contracted road assets. In Australia, PBC is already being implemented on all categories of roads: national, state, urban and rural. Australian PBC arrangement is designed to turn over control and responsibility for roadway system maintenance, rehabilitation, and capital improvement projects to private contractors. Contractors’ responsibilities include determination of treatment types, the design, programming and the undertaking of works needed to maintain road networks at predetermined performance levels. Indonesia initiated two PBC pilot projects in 2011, the Pantura Section Demak-Trengguli (7.68 kilometers) in Central Java Province and Section Ciasem-Pamanukan (18.5 kilometers) in West Java Province. Both sections are categorized as national roads. The contract duration for both of these projects is four years. To facilitate a possible way forward, it is proposed to conduct a study to understand Australia's experiences of advancing from pilot projects to nation-wide programs using PBC. The study focuses on the scope of contracts, bidding processes, risk allocation, and key drivers, using relevant PBC case studies from Australia. Recommendations for future PBC deployment nation-wide should be based on more research associated with risk allocation. This will include investigation of standard conditions of contract. Implications of the contract clauses for the risk management strategy to be adopted by contractors. Based on the nature of risks, some are best managed by the project owner. It is very important that all parties involved to be open to the new rules of contract and to convince themselves about the potential increased benefits of the use of PBC. The most recent states of challenging issues were explored and described.

Curriculum frames for two different groups of teachers in Indonesia

This paper reports on a study conducted in Indonesia at a time when two curricular reforms were underway. School-based curriculum was being implemented to allow Indonesian teachers more autonomy to develop curriculum to suit their local school community and its needs. Alongside this, the second concurrent reform introducing Character Education was more strongly prescriptive, requiring all teachers, including those working in language education, to address a particular set of stipulated values across all classes. The Indonesian schooling sector employs teachers at two different levels of professional status: civil servant teachers working in the higher status public sector and non-civil servant teachers who teach in the private Islamic Schools. Each level received different professional learning opportunities to prepare for the reforms. This study is interested in whether and how EFL teachers of different status exercised degrees of professionalism as they recontextualised these reforms in their classes. Nine teachers were interviewed and three of their classes were observed. This study found that the group of teachers with more professional learning could cope better with the weaker framing of school-based curriculum, while teachers with less professional learning reported disengagement with the reforms.