The School

The school is a public elementary school which follows the national curriculum. There are 142 students, and all of them are Muslims. But Catholics can also attend the school. The school has classes from 1st to 6th grade. They have lessons in religion two hours a week, and they have two prayers a day in the school. The first prayer is before the first lesson starts and the second is at 11 am.

The teacher has five years of university education. He taught the 6th grade and made 1.5 million Rupiah per month, which is equal to 176 USD.

The differences between public and private/religious schools is in his opinion that the private schools are more expensive for the parents, and have more focus on religious teaching. They also get support from the parents to maintain the school buildings and upkeep the equipment. He said that the public and the private schools had the same quality, but then he added that the public schools were better in general.

When it comes to improvements of the school system in Indonesia, he first said that the schools should get more support from the government. Next he pointed out that the teachers’ salaries should be raised because many teachers in Indonesia experience economic difficulties. He said that there are more uneducated than educated teachers in Indonesia, and there is an obvious connection between the teachers’ knowledge and the students’ opportunity to inscribe the knowledge. He therefore wished that more of the uneducated could get a teacher’s training.

For the educated ones, he wished that there were more opportunities for them to get post-qualifying education in pedagogic. Overall he was not satisfied with the level of the students and meant that the lack of motivation was one of the main reasons. To improve that, he saw it as a necessity that the government took the initiative and responsibility to change the whole educational system.

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