Teacher Recruitment Must Be Selective

Media Indonesia, page 20

The Ministry of Education and Culture asked heads of regional administrations (pemda) to be more selective in recruiting teachers for schools in their regions. Prospective teachers must meet the qualification requirements as mandated by Law (UU) No. 14 Year 2005 on Teachers and Lecturers.

Directorate General of Teachers and Education Personnel (GTK) of Kemendikbud, Sumarna Surapranata, at the opening of Nanggroe Aceh Darussalam Education Development Discussion at the Office of Kemendikbud, Jakarta yesterday, said that in accordance with the mandate of the Teachers and Lecturers Law in which starting 2016 teachers must qualify the minimum S-1 or D-4 education and must be a certified educator by taking the teacher professional education (PPG) program. This aspect should be of concern to all of us in appointing teachers.

The regional administrations (pemda) should prepare candidate teachers who meet the requirements. He asserted that teachers are the key to improving the quality of education. Kemdikbud hopes that the participants of this educational development discussion could pay attention to the fulfillment of needs and the improvement of teacher quality. He also asked the provincial administrations to conduct regency/city development concomitant with the transfer of education management responsibilities between regencies/cities and provinces.

Pranata said that for Aceh itself the ratio of teachers and students is more than adequate, namely 1:9 and 1:10. However, the issue is that the number of teachers is not evenly distributed. Therefore, through this discussion, it is gathered so that the regional administrations could well develop a medium-term regional development plan in the field of education.