National Teachers’ Day should be an opportunity to renew the commitment to A Million Honorary Teacher Recruitment Program for hiring teachers as contract-based government employees (PPPK), a legislator has said.
“We will continue to carry out the program to recruit a million honorary teachers to become PPPK as a part of our commitment toward advancing, respecting, and improving the prosperity of Indonesian teachers,” House of Representatives (DPR) Commission X Chairman Syaiful Huda informed in a statement released here on Thursday.
The management of education workers remains one of the crucial issues in Indonesia’s education system, he noted.
According to Huda, the imbalance of teachers compared to the requirement on the field, unequal distribution of teachers, and lack of prosperity for teachers are problems that have remained unresolved over the years.
“Despite the fact that teachers are the backbone of quality education. How should we expect quality human resources in Indonesia if the teachers cannot teach optimally?” he asked.
He deemed that the program to recruit one million honorary teachers as PPPKs is a breakthrough move by the government to resolve the problem of education workers in Indonesia.
However, there are still many issues concerning its execution such as the low formation submission from the regional government, high passing grade, low affirmation, and examination schedule uncertainty, he opined.
“These problems should immediately be resolved so that the target of this one million honorary teachers recruitment program can be achieved no later than 2022,” Huda stressed.
“Do not let the execution of A Million Honorary Teachers Recruitment program become a problem on its own in the future because it (the current issues) is never resolved,” he affirmed.
Resolving these issues necessitates assistance from education stakeholders, starting from teacher’s organizations, education activists, to people’s representatives, he argued.
These programs should be supervised so that the government can truly work to resolve the recruitment of honorary teachers, he said.
“One of the crucial problems that hinder A Million Honorary Teachers Recruitment program is the budget problem,” Huda noted.
“Some 20 percent of the state budget allocated for education has not been fully utilized for educational purposes which creates many crucial problems in education, including the management of teachers,” he elaborated.
Source: Antara News