The School

We went to the local school, SD Negeri Giricahyo, and talked with several of the teachers at the school. The teachers dismissed the students for about one hour while they were talking to us. The 120 students stood outside looking at us in amazement. We were the first foreigners to ever visit the school.

All the schools in the area are governmental. The main differences between the public and private schools are that the private schools have better facilities and materials, but the public schools score better on national test.

The government pays the teachers, but the salary is not enough to support a family, so most teachers have two jobs. The school is free for the students; the government gives support to the school according to the number of students. According to the teachers, 20% of the national budget should be allocated for education. And the government has promised to increase the economic support to the schools.

The school also gets some donations from private persons. Some families do not have the resources to supply their children with food to bring to school. Therefore some of the money from the government goes to a lunch programme for the children; the problem is that the money is not enough to last the whole semester. So at the end, some of the students have difficulties concentrating because of empty stomachs.

Religion is an important part of the curriculum, but they only learn about Islam. The students attend school 40 hours a week, 3 of these are for religious studies. The students learn how to read the Koran and how to pray in Arabic. The school is currently building a new prayer room since they moved the library into the old one. They have a prayer room so that the students have a place to practice what they learn in class. During Ramadan the students have to get signatures from their parents as proof that they have done their fasting and prayers. Other subjects are Science, Indonesian, Math, National and Social Studies, Javanese, Culture and Gym. The school had chosen to have English and Crafts in addition.

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