School funding in the spotlight

Jakarta, NU Online
A presidential instruction ordering repairs to all damaged school buildings will be issued this month, the government promised on Thursday, just days after a student was killed when her school’s roof collapsed.

Education Minister Muhammad Nuh said his office was gathering data on damaged schools from across the country to serve as the basis for the presidential instruction, which is expected at the end of this month.

The ministry has already identified 153,000 classrooms at the elementary and junior high level in urgent need of repairs. The government has allocated Rp 20.4 trillion ($2.3 billion) for those repairs from the 2011 and 2012 state budgets, but Nuh said an additional Rp 2.08 trillion would be required.

“Hopefully we can find a way to get the funding,” he said following a meeting with Vice President Boediono.

Boediono called on the ministry to ensure the repair funds were not wasted on “dragging out the existence of schools that are no longer efficient.”

He said that meant schools within close proximity of others should be merged under a policy dubbed regrouping.

“Regrouping is important to ensure that educational resources are used optimally,” Boediono was quoted by the Jakarta Globe as saying. “It’s not just a question of funding.”

The announcement came on the heels of an incident on Monday in which a student at the Al-Ikhlas Islamic primary school in Lebak, Banten, died after the school’s roof collapsed onto her.

On Thursday, the family of 10-year-old Sukniah received Rp 20 million in financial aid from Religious Affairs Minister Suryadharma Ali. Islamic schools in Indonesia fall under the jurisdiction of the Religious Affairs Ministry, not the Education Ministry.

Seven other students injured in the collapse each received Rp 2 million.

Nuh said the funding to repair school buildings would also cover Islamic schools.

Meanwhile, six districts in Papua and one in Riau have still not distributed School Operational Fund (BOS) money to schools in their jurisdiction in the second quarter of the year, Nuh said, despite the deadline having passed.

The fund is to help schools cover their overhead expenses. The second-quarter BOS was supposed to be fully disbursed by the end of June.

Nuh said that for the third-quarter BOS, meant to be handed out by the end of September, only 74 percent of the funding had been distributed.

“That means that for this third quarter, there are 130 districts that have not disbursed all their BOS funding,” he said.

The total BOS funding for the year is Rp 16.8 trillion, to be distributed on a quarterly basis. (dar)