CAN AUST HELP FIX RI ED WOES?

Needs are now, fixes maybe later                          

Is Indonesia expecting Australia to help rescue the nation’s education system? 

That’s not as implausible as it sounds. Outsiders are involved elsewhere in the economy.  Transport infrastructure development relies heavily on massive loans from banks in Japan and China, and technical expertise from the same sources.  Think MRT and the Jakarta-Bandung high-speed rail project.

The Republic already depends on farmers in Vietnam and Thailand growing enough rice to feed their hungry neighbor; so why not foreigners in technical colleges and universities?

The doors are now slightly ajar into what was once a no-go zone. The recently inked Indonesia-Australia Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (IA-CEPA) allows Australian campuses to set up shop in the Republic.

At the signing Vice President Jusuf Kalla reportedly said:  ‘Indonesia’s next big agenda is to improve its human resources to boost our competitiveness and readiness to face the future, so I’m waiting for investment in universities as well as vocational and training education in Indonesia.’

It’s likely to be a long wait even though the demands are here and huge. Millions of parents want their youngsters well prepared to meet the challenges ahead, and for their nation to reach its potential.

It’s an archipelago of opportunity for Australia’s high-quality education sector, but the IA-CEPA alone will not be enough to help VP Kalla’s agenda. 

Here’s why: The issues around education are complex-compound. They include inadequate funding, human resource deficits, perverse incentive structures and poor management, but most fundamentally a matter of politics and power.  Foreign experts can assist with curricula and administration, but the rest is for Indonesians only. 

Consider the size of the problem: The World Bank reports that more than half the population that’s undergone compulsory schooling is ‘functionally illiterate’. 
The UNESCO definition is prolix, but basically means one in two can’t manage daily living and employment tasks that need reading skills beyond the basics.  

The OECD’s Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) measures 15-year-olds’ skills in reading, science and maths across 72 nations.  Indonesia is number 62. Around 90 per cent of Indonesia’s 130 million workforce don’t have tertiary qualifications.

This creates real difficulties for employers forced to educate school-leavers who should be work-ready before knocking on factory and office doors. Although a massive 20 percent of the national budget is supposed to be spent on education, the results don’t match the expenditure.

Last year the Lowy Institute in Australia published a comprehensive report which concluded: ‘Indonesia’s education system has been a high-volume, low-quality enterprise that has fallen well short of the country’s ambitions for an internationally competitive system.’

The need for change, particularly in trade-training, is recognized by business leaders, educators, bureaucrats - and from his public statements - President Joko Widodo; what they don’t know is how to fix.

And maybe Australia doesn’t either.

VP Kalla’s hopes for Australian investment won’t be met in a hurry.  Dr Eugene Sebastian, director of the Australia-Indonesia Centre, wrote in the University World News that the agreement:

‘… opens up new opportunities for Australian education and training. These opportunities should be seen as a long game. It will take more than five years before any benefits will flow. But the time to look in-depth at education and training opportunities for Australian providers is now.’

He lists just three tertiary institutions that have built relationships with Indonesia, indicating investors are wary and looking for real changes in national governance before risking big dollars.

First they’ll want to know the next President’s Cabinet pick.  Then Parliaments in the two countries have to ratify the agreement.

As both will be structured differently following elections there’s no guarantee the IA-CEPA will survive intact.  The Australian Labor Party, which pollsters tip likely to win this year’s election (probably in May), is already signaling concern about some clauses.

Then there’s risk.  Indonesia ranks 73^rd on the World Bank’s ease-of-doing-business register.  That’s way behind other economies in the region.  On Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index, Indonesia ranks 89 / 180.  Australia is 13^th.

The President, backed by many academics, appears to realize that Indonesia will have to form partnerships with overseas educators, but the nationalistic political atmosphere is unwelcoming.  Paranoia is taking root; distrust surrounds foreigners’ real motives in showing interest in the Republic.

There are about 3,000 tertiary institutions in Indonesia.  Just 122 are State-run and mostly concerned with teaching, not research. The rest are private and often aligned with religious organisations. Despite an abundance of world-class talent, the fact that Indonesia has never won a Nobel Prize should be causing a national outcry.

Not all unis follow the system of open inquiry and liberal discussion pursued by Western campuses.  Most pay their staff poorly by Australian standards and seldom provide quality facilities. 

Obviously a deep understanding of Indonesian culture and its political and administrative systems is necessary for Australian educators seeking entry; the irony is that these same unis have been shedding Indonesian studies and language for decades.

Consequently recruiting staff with deep knowledge of the market and the skills to help guide providers will not be easy.  Apart from geography, the Land Down Under is not ‘exceptionally well placed to partner’ as Dr Sebastian claims.

Australia has a moral duty to offer its expertise, but learning is now driven by commerce. How many are prepared to play ‘the long game’, to invest millions with no return for years just for the chance to test this mystifying market?

Curiously education hasn’t appeared front and center in the Indonesian election debates.  Poverty, health, the economy, transport, trade, security, infrastructure, taxation, foreign affairs … all are important.  But without a well-educated citizenry all are undermined.

(First published in The Jakarta Post, 2 April 2019 )

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