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National law and policies on fee or for free – Indonesia

It matters if the state provides education for free or charges fees. Every state in the world has signed up to at least one international treaty obliging it to making primary education free and compulsory, and secondary education progressively so. But education cannot be compulsory if it is not also free and this contradiction is too often ignored. Furthermore, what does free actually mean in a world with numerous overt and hidden costs, to learners, parents, local communities? In a 2006 survey by Katarina Tomasevski education was found not to be genuinely free in the vast majority of countries in the world. The quote below on your country (if information was available) is from this very important survey.

 

The national laws and policies are the applications of the constitution, yet may actually be more advanced than this, as they are generally redrawn or updated more frequently than constitutions are. Laws are made by the government, the parliamentarians, and the bureaucrats, often in consultation with civil society. However, this also leaves them open to vulnerability and retrogression as they can become instruments of short-term politics and priorities. Laws and policies are open to change and influence through the routes of the democratic process and civil society campaigns. And where possible their violations should be challenged, either through the courts or through judicial review.

 

The state is the central actor in any claim to the right to education: it is the prime duty-bearer and the prime implementer; it is the guarantor; and it is the state´s signature vis-à-vis the international norms and standards which binds it to respect, protect and fulfil the right to education. The state must therefore be judged or challenged on its central text on the right to education, whether this be the constitution, the laws or the policies.

Indonesia has one of the oldest constitutional guarantees of the right to education, which predates the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by three years. Its 1945 Constitution says: “Every citizen has the right to obtain education. The Government shall create and execute a system of national education provided by law”. This ‘right to obtain education’ was not defined so to require the state to ensure that primary education is free. On the contrary, governmental policy was for a long time to tolerate, if not encourage parental payments:

 

Sources from parents are usually in the form of monthly fees, entrance fees, term and final test fees, and extra curriculum fees. On average, fees contribute 35% of the total school revenue, excluding teachers’ salaries. 

 

A dual system of public and private, free and for-fee, religious and secular educational institutions forms part of the law. In particular, the law guarantees freedom of fund-raising for “private schooling and education”. Governmental obligations in education are gradually being clarified and specified. At the time of my mission to Indonesia as the Special Rapporteur on the right to education, in 2003, the law provided confusing answers to the question whether primary education should be free or for-fee. A draft education law stipulated that central and local government “have to ensure the availability of funds for the implementation of education for every Indonesian citizen from ages seven to fifteen”.

 

It added that communities had to provide additional resources and stipulated that every pupil had to pay fees unless exempted. This should have been – but was not - the case for all pupils in compulsory education. School fees were thereby both outlawed and allowed.

 

Increased public investment in education was elevated among parliamentary priorities as part of democratization after turbulent changes in 1997-1999.

 

Legal reform which aimed to transform budgetary allocations for education from discretionary to obligatory was described by the governmental delegation to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights in 2003 as follows:

 

One of the major developments registered in the reform of Indonesia’s system of education is the adoption of the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution on 10 August2002. The newly amended Constitution not only guarantees every Indonesian’s right to education, but also the corresponding obligation of the state in this regard. Article 31 stipulates the government’s obligation to ensure the fulfilment of the right of every citizen to basic education, as well as the financial responsibility which this fulfilment entails. In addition, the state must develop and implement a national education system, and earmark at least 20% of its own and local governments’ budgets to meet the system’s requirements.

 

That commitment has yet to be translated into governmental policy. The government introduced its budget for 2005 with an explanatory note that existing constitutional and legal guarantees “have yet to be met”. Merely 12% of the budget was allocated to education, much less than the law mandates. The government explained that the obligatory 20% for education was “gradually accommodated”. Guy de Jonquieres has found that “investment is desperately needed in basic education, sadly neglected since Indonesia’s 1997 financial crisis”.

The 2003 education law specifies that government is obliged to guarantee full financing of education for children aged 7-15 and no cost should be charged to children or their families.

 

However, decentralization had shifted fiscal responsibility from the central government to provinces and communities. There is little country-wide information available on the financing of education and what is available points to inequalities. Primary education is free in parts of the country, for-fee in others. Much as elsewhere, the poorest communities and provinces are the least able to ensure public funding for education. Education International has reported that “fees, official and unofficial, including payments for registration, books, examinations, testing, and uniforms” continue to be charged.