Reflecting on the Portrait of Indonesian Education Today

It has been more than six months since he was officially inaugurated as President-elect on October 20, 2024─Prabowo Subianto has been leading Indonesia. In the span of one semester, there are many sectors or strategic lines that can be assessed from President Prabowo's administration. Due to the momentum of National Education Day, which is commemorated on May 2 every year, this article will only focus on writing about the portrait of Indonesian education today.

I would like to take an objective look at the current Indonesian education landscape. Under Prabowo's leadership, the national education, culture, research and technology sectors that were previously under one ministry nomenclature (Kemendikbudristek) were split into three ministries (Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education, Ministry of Culture, Ministry of Higher Education, Research and Technology) so that the bureaucracy in charge of education, culture, research and technology became relatively fat.

As usual, every time there is a change of government regime, there are ministerial posts that are also replaced by their leaders. And every time the minister changes, so does the policy. This is very visible in the education sector, good things that had previously been running and proven effective in advancing Indonesian education, apparently under the control of the new minister it became stagnant and even abandoned.

Source: Ministry of Elementary and Secondary Education

Despite the shortcomings and imperfections, former Minister of Education, Culture and Research Nadiem Anwar Makarim, who served from the 2019-2024 period, in principle, left many positive breakthroughs and legacies for the world of Indonesian education. Unfortunately, in the hands of the new minister, the good things that have been running are not even continued and a discourse has emerged that they will be replaced.

We can see how national education is moving under Prabowo's new minister.  In the higher education sector, instead of showing proud work achievements, the minister often makes blunders and controversies that cause ripples of conflict within the Ministry so that he is opposed by his own subordinates until in the end the relevant minister is in the public spotlight, summoned by Commission X of the DPR-RI, and culminates in President Prabowo then having to replace him with a new minister.

It was later revealed that he decided to resign because he felt he did not meet the president's expectations. Practically, the position of mendiktisaintek at the beginning of Prabowo's presidency only lasted four months. What about primary and secondary education? Objectively, the minister in charge of primary and secondary education must be admittedly not as controversial and turbulent as Mendiktisaintek. However, in terms of policy, Prabowo's education minister is normative, not revolutionary, and tends to want to erase the good legacies of the previous minister.

Of the two ministers of education in Prabowo's cabinet, not a single one has explicitly talked about the Merdeka Belajar Kampus Merdeka (MBKM) program inherited from Nadiem Makarim, which has proven effective in transforming national education into a more vibrant and progressive one. Instead, Mendikdasmen decided to revive policies that were previously abolished by Nadiem. For example, the National Examination (UN) that Nadiem has abolished will be revived with the Academic Competency Test (TKA) packaging, the Merdeka Curriculum which has only been running for a few years and has been relatively successful in providing a new project-based approach to the national learning and education system is reportedly being reviewed and then open to the possibility of being replaced with a new curriculum.

Furthermore, the continuation of serial programs from Merdeka Belajar is unclear. What is the news of cool programs such as Activist Teachers, Activist Schools? Are they still moving or are they no longer moving? It is likely that the good program was stopped. More than that, the thing that is no less sad is that the science, social studies, and language majors program, which had previously been abolished to give high school students independence in learning and determining their own subject areas to be pursued, will reportedly be reactivated. In fact, teachers, activists, education practitioners object to the reactivation of the majoring program for high school students. They consider the majoring program is no longer relevant to today's needs. This is the reality of Indonesian national education.

Every time there is a change of minister, there is a change of policy. The policy makers may be happy with the new policy. However, for the implementers and objects of the policy, such as teachers and students, it will be difficult, why is the ideal thing being tinkered with again just to look different and not want to be the same as the previous minister. It is not an exaggeration of the adage that reads, every time the minister changes, it is the students and teachers who will become guinea pigs, aka the object of experimentation. If this continues, when will Indonesian education progress? Hopefully the commemoration of National Education Day 2025 will become a momentum to reflect on the direction of Indonesian education in the future!