Int’l-standard schools must disband by April

As the Education and Culture Ministry drags its feet in responding to the Constitutional Court ruling on the disbandment of international-standard pilot project schools (RSBIs) and international-standard schools (SBIs), Chief Justice Mahfud MD insisted that all schools under the program should be shut down by April.

Mahfud said that the ministry had been given a four-month deadline to close all RSBIs and SBIs. 

“It is impossible to make a sudden move. However, the shutting down of the RSBIs and SBIs must be conducted immediately. This means that by the end of this semester in April, all RSBIs will no longer exist,” Mahfud said during a press conference in Jakarta on Sunday.

Last week, the Constitutional Court ruled that Article 50 (3) of the 2003 National Educational System Law, which governs the implementation of the program, was unconstitutional. RSBIs and SBIs were, therefore, declared illegal as they provided unequal access to quality education.

The judicial review challenging provisions in the law was filed by a coalition of parents, education experts and several NGOs in December 2011.

Education and Culture Minister Mohammad Nuh earlier said the court ruling should not mean the end of existing SBIs. 

Nuh was also confident that the ruling was applicable only to public schools.

On Sunday, Mahfud clarified that all schools under the program, be they public or private, had to be shut down. “The article [in the law] does not mention private or state schools,” he said.

Nuh, who was present at the press conference on Sunday, said that the ministry would comply with the ruling, while insisting that the SBI program had noble intentions.

“The article embodies the spirit of reform. In building the nation, we need high-quality human resources coming from top schools. During the law’s deliberation, the lawmakers agreed that top schools refer to international-standard schools,” Nuh said.

Nuh also told reporters that the ministry was devising a new plan to keep some of programs under the SBI plan.

Earlier, Nuh and the ministry officials proposed to change the status of RSBIs and SBIs to independent schools as part of an effort to keep English as the primary language of instruction.

Government Regulation No. 19/2005 on national education standards stipulates that formal education institutions that can achieve the national standards can be categorized as independent schools.

Under this system, the schools can apply a credit-per-semester system, also known as SKS, and receive special assistance from the government to provide world-class education.

Nuh declined to confirm whether the ministry would implement this proposal.

Indonesia Corruption Watch (ICW), one of the plaintiffs in the judicial review, has lambasted the proposal, saying that the government regulation no longer had legal power.

“The scrapping of Article 50 [3] of the National Educational System Law will automatically render its provisions void. Don’t create a policy that will contradict the ruling,” Febri Hendri, the head of ICW’s public service monitoring division, said on Sunday.

Febri urged the ministry to immediately start a transition period for RSBIs and SBIs to become national-standard schools, to restore equal access to quality education.

The ICW and other plaintiffs accused the government of unfairly pouring money into the SBIs.

The government has awarded block grants to the 1,329 SBIs, ranging from Rp 200 million (US$20,533) to Rp 500 million per year.

sumber : http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2013/01/14/int-l-standard-schools-must-disband-april.html