The Need For Improving The Quality Of Education In The Discourse Of Indonesian-Dutch Cooperation

JAKARTA - The arrival of the King and Queen of the Netherlands, H.H. Raja Willem-Alexander and YM Ratu Maxima to Indonesia gave rise to a discourse on cooperation in the education sector.

Coordinating Minister for Political, Legal and Security Affairs (Menko Polhukam) Mahfud MD said that the cooperation discussed between the two countries could produce quality human resources (HR) in the future.

Education practitioner Indra Charismiadji has a positive attitude towards this plan. He said this cooperation was one way to improve the quality of Indonesian education. Based on research from various international institutions, Indonesia ranks at the bottom of several aspects of education.

Some of them, namely, the World Bank had reported that it took Indonesia about 45 years just to catch up in terms of reading and 75 years in the field of science.

Then, UNESCO also had time to issue data about only one in a thousand children who have a serious interest in reading.

"With this cooperation, it is hoped that it can greatly assist in improving the quality of education and boosting the low literacy rate," Indra told VOI, Wednesday, March 11.

The form of cooperation expected in this discourse is more about capacity building or increasing abilities and skills which can later support competence in work.

In addition, an increase in literacy is also expected so that the younger generation can compete at the international level.

However, there are also things that are not expected to happen in the discourse of this cooperation. One of them is about changing the new curriculum. The reason is that the current curriculum has not been evaluated since it was implemented in 2013.

"Yes, no, that direction is a form of cooperation. More on capacity building and literacy," said Indra.

The Deputy Secretary General of the Federation of All Indonesian Teachers' Unions (FSGI) Satriwan Salim also expressed rejection of curriculum changes in the discourse of cooperation.

According to him, this will have an impact on the emergence of new policies that will actually make the younger generation and education workers as victims.

"Don't let the goal of creating a new curriculum without a comprehensive study become victims if policies are made without good research, of course students and teachers will become victims."

Deputy Secretary General of FSGI Satriwan Salim

He hopes that the discourse of cooperation between the Netherlands and Indonesia is to improve the quality or competence of teachers by holding trainings. Because, referring to the competency test data in 2015, each teacher at the education level only received 56.69 on a scale of 0 to 100.

"This means that we need an effective and urgent strategy to increase teacher competence," said Satriwan.