Heavy Challenges To Realize Inclusive Education

Ganjar Pranowo-Mahfud MD launched an inclusive education idea in the Presidential Candidate Debate at JCC Senayan, Sunday (4/2/2024). (VOI/Bambang E Ros)

JAKARTA The issue of education is still a concern for the government. Providing opportunities for all citizens of the country to receive education is the noble ideal of the 1945 Law.

In the fifth debate of the 2024 presidential election at the Jakarta Convention Center, Sunday (4/4/2024), presidential candidate number three Ganjar Pranowo touched on the role of inclusive education in the first segment of his vision and mission presentation.

Not only that, but the former Governor of Central Java also mentioned the establishment of a more established curriculum, with the best access for students and education personnel.

"Ladies and gentlemen, we must build education and Culture together to have better access to education, then a stable curriculum and of course the facilities provided must be able to provide the best access for our students, including the fate of teachers and lecturers," said Ganjar.

For some people, inclusive education may still sound foreign. Whereas the inclusive education system is being intensified in recent years.

Quoted from the website of the Ministry of Education and Culture, inclusive education is an educational system that provides opportunities for all students who have special needs and have the potential for intelligence and/or special talent to take education or learning in one educational environment together with students in general.

The special needs in question include blind people, deaf people, tuna grahita, tuna daksa, tuna, barrel tuna, mute, hyperactive, difficulty learning, down syndrome, autistic, and double tuna.

While UNICEF defines inclusive education means all children are in the same classroom, in the same school. This means, real learning opportunities for groups that are traditionally marginalized, not only children with disabilities, but also minority language speakers.

The trend of the number of inclusive schools actually tends to increase. Based on data obtained by the Directorate of Community Education and Special Education (PMPK) in 2017, there were 31,724 inclusion schools with 159,002 students with special needs (GDPK). And in 2021, there were 35,802 inclusion schools with 127,541 GDPK.

However, implementing an inclusion school is not easy. In the field, there are many challenges that must be faced. Starting from GDPK itself, educators, to school facilities and infrastructure.

Looking back, in 2009 the teachers of SMP 259 Jakarta imposed sanctions in the form of punishments or not upgrading to students who were considered and always had poor grades.

It happened before they came to master students with psychology at the University of Indonesia who came to make observations. They are looking to find out if there is a GDPK that attends there.

From the results of observations of students, children who are often punished for being considered naughty turn out to be hyperactive. Meanwhile, those who always get poor grades turned out to have intellectual disabilities.

Not only that, it turns out that there are still many educators who do not know about inclusive education due to the lack of socialization.

The challenge of providing inclusive education is real. And this is also recognized by the Head of the Advocacy Division of the Education and Teacher Association (P2G) Iman Zanatul Haeri.

"Indeed, there is an effort by the Ministry of Education and Culture to make education more insulatory, with the addition of facilities in inclusion schools," said Iman during a conversation with VOI.

"But to achieve that, there are two things that must be accommodated, namely the infrastructure and of course the human resources. Now everything has not been accommodated," he added.

Iman admits that there are still many things that happen at SMP 259 Jakarta. According to him, the understanding of teachers regarding inclusion still does not meet the standards needed.

"The capacity of educators for children with special needs (abk), for inclusion, of course, must be adjusted to the type of abk," explained Iman.

Inclusion schools need accompanying teachers, while there are many teacher activities and the understanding of teachers is still minimal. This is the challenge of providing inclusion schools," he said again.

Limitation of special supervisory teachers (GPK) is indeed a challenge in organizing inclusion schools. Whereas in one of the articles in Permendiknas number 70 of 2009 it is written that the government is obliged to provide accompanying teachers for schools appointed as inclusion schools.

The Inclusive School Image Report in Indonesia, the First Junior High School Review in 2017 noted that in Indonesia there were 2,465 public inclusive schools but only had 728 GPKs. For example, in 2017 there were 1,138 students who were light and currently studying at public inclusive schools, but the number of GPKs was only 41. The number of students spread across 34 provinces but the GPK was only in 18 provinces.

Another example is GDPK with a disability of muteness. With the number of mute students studying at inclusive state junior high schools totaling 112 people, there are only two GPK people. According to a report from the Ministry of Education and Culture, cases like this occur in all disability categories.