Reflections on Indonesia’s Merdeka Belajar Reform.

Why has Indonesia’s education system failed to improve student learning? The answer is not due to lack of effort. Over the past two decades, the government has enacted a number of sometimes large and
costly reforms. These previous reforms include:

• Constitutional mandate to allocate at least 20% of state budget for education
• Devolution of authority from national to sub-national governments.
• Stipulation of a uniform and relatively ambitious national education standards.
• Introduction of school-based management, including the establishment of school boards.
• Increasing the compulsory school age from 6 to 9 years, there by expanding access to lower secondary school.
• Increasing school subsidies, including for private schools.
• Teacher certification along with provision of allowances, including for non-government teachers.
  National curriculum revisions along with teacher retraining programs.
  In addition to these large-scale reforms,there are numerous smaller scale initiatives.Taken together, these reforms and initiatives sought to increase education financing,expand access to schooling, and improve teaching and learning quality. The first two goals were achieved. But teaching and learning quality did not improve significantly, as indicated by international test results (e.g. PISA) and our own national data. Why haven’t these reforms improved student learning, despite their huge cost and scale of implementation?
  A “commonsense” explanation is that key actors lack the capacity and/ or motivation to implement the reforms. Key actors in this context would include bureaucrats in the Ministry, officials and staff
  at the education offices of the subnational governments, to principals and teachers at the frontline. The assumption is that many of them do not have adequate understanding of the policies and programs, or have vested interests which are misaligned with the reform goals. These cause distortions in the implementation of the reforms, and ultimately undermine the probability of
  obtaining the intended outcomes.

baca juga : Indonesia Educational Statistics In Brief

This line of reasoning underlies many “technical assistance” programs funded by development partners. And in many cases, the assumptions might be true. But this explanation only touches on proximal
determinants of student learning. It does not tell us why these key actors have low competencies. It does not tell us why their capabilities do not seem to improve over time, despite the training and technical assistance they have received. It does not tell us why even teachers and principals who are competent
and motivated still experience difficulty in improving student learning in their schools.
Perhaps this is partly because teachers and principals do not have access to high quality teaching resources. Again, this might be true to some extent. But it does not explain why the teaching resources are of poor quality, despite the significant increase in education budget over the past two decades.
Another explanation – one which the Ministry subscribes to – is that past reforms addressed specific issues without taking into account other crucial elements of the education system.
To illustrate, consider one of Indonesia’s most expensive education reforms in the last two decades: teacher certification. Introduced around 2005, it intended to motivate teachers to improve their competencies by providing them with a significant salary increase. Teachers had to meet a certain qualification criteria to be certified, before receiving the special allowance. The process of obtaining
this qualification was assumed to improve teachers’ professional competence. Teachers who have received the allowance were required to use some of the money to take part in further professional development. This was assumed to develop teacher competencies in a continuous manner – and ultimately improve teaching and learning quality. Unfortunately, these assumptions proved to
be wrong: the additional teacher allowance made no difference to student learning
.
In hindsight, if we take a systems view it is quite clear why teacher certification did not improve student learning. The reform provided teachers with more financial resources, but did not change other elements
in the system. Teacher performance was still evaluated using the same criteria, instrument, and mechanism which were unrelated to student learning. Teacher training was not adjusted to help teachers implement better teaching practices. The curriculum was still jam-packed with content mandated by the
government, encouraging the use of one way lectures to “finish” the syllabus. Standardized exit exams for students still measured superficial understanding of vast amounts of information – giving incentives for teaching for memorization and test taking skills.
So for the certified teachers, little else changed apart from having to regularly submit training or seminar certificates. Teacher certification improved many teachers’ livelihoods, but did little to motivate or enable
them to improve their teaching practices. It is unsurprising that the reform had no measurable impact on student learning.

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Sumber : Kemdikbud