Coordinating Minister Muhadjir Effendy: Fraud In PPDB Is Not A Mistake In The System

JAKARTA - Coordinating Minister for Human Development and Culture (Menko PMK) RI Muhadjir Effendy emphasized that the fraud that emerged in the implementation of the admission of new students or PPDB zoning system was not due to the error of the system.

"It's not the fault of the system, but the supervision that doesn't work," said Muhadjir after closing the 2023 National Cooperative Summit Seminar at SMA Muhammadiyah 1 Yogyakarta City, quoted from Antara, Saturday, July 22.

According to Muhadjir, to prevent fraud, local governments should be able to anticipate by planning and mapping the number of seats in public schools, six months before the implementation of PPDB.

He gave an example of the number of seats during the upcoming PPDB of junior high school, it should have been calculated based on the number of students who are currently in 6th grade elementary school in the local zone.

"Not the previous six months at least. Not only suddenly because the intake was clear that those who wanted to enter junior high school were 6th grade elementary school students in that zone who had to be prioritized," he said.

Muhadjir assessed that the zoning system is actually better than returning to the old system which has created many problems such as counterfeiting values to buying and selling seats.

"Later on, the competition will be free, who has money, partly because they are smart, partly because they have positions. In the past, many representatives of the people received quotas, had seats, had the right to include anyone in a school called a favorite," he said.

In fact, according to him, learning from the old system of teachers also competes to be able to teach in favorite public schools.

Muhadjir said that the implementation of the zoning system has a spirit of improvement, especially to eliminate the phenomenon of "castization" of public schools.

"There are certain schools that are up for grabs while there are schools that don't get any attention at all. That's what we used to eliminate on a zoning basis," he said.

Furthermore, according to Muhadjir, the policy also aims to achieve equal distribution of the quality of education in various regions.

"If until now there is still a view that parents are fighting over certain schools, it means don't blame the system, what's wrong should be the local government, why hasn't it been able to create an equal distribution of education in its place for six years," he said.

However, Muhadjir stated that there would be no problem if there were some parties who considered that zoning policies needed to be evaluated or even replaced.

"If you want to return to the old system, please. If in my opinion, fix this existing system, please change it if it is not suitable and that should be the case, there must always be evaluation and improvement," he said.

He emphasized that the emergence of a zoning system was not a unilateral decision by the government, but based on the results of a study by the Ministry of Education and Culture and recommendations from the ombudsman.

"So it is not an individual, so if you really want to be eliminated please go ahead but also have to go through the right procedure. There is no claim that it is (the zoning system) by whom," said Muhadjir.