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Législations et politiques nationales sur la scolarité payante ou gratuite – Indonesia

Le fait que l'éducation délivrée par l’Etat soit gratuite ou payante n’est pas anodin. Tous les pays du monde ont signé au moins un traité international les obligeant à délivrer une éducation primaire gratuite et obligatoire, suivie progressivement par l’enseignement secondaire. L’éducation ne peut pas être obligatoire si elle n’est pas gratuite, mais cette contradiction est trop souvent ignorée. De plus, que signifie exactement la gratuité dans un monde où les apprenants, les parents et les communautés locales supportent une multitude de coûts officiels ou déguisés ? Une enquête de Katarina Tomasevski en 2006 montrait que dans la grande majorité des pays à travers le globe, l’éducation n’était pas réellement gratuite. Les citations concernant votre pays ci-dessous (selon la disponibilité des données) sont extraites de cette importante étude.

 

Les lois et les politiques nationales sont des applications de la Constitution, qu’elles devancent parfois car elles sont plus souvent révisées et renouvelées. Les lois sont faites par le gouvernement, les parlementaires et l’administration, souvent en consultation avec la société civile. Cela les rend vulnérables et soumises à un risque de régression dans la mesure où elles deviennent souvent des instruments au service de visions politiques et de priorités à court terme. Les lois et les politiques sont ouvertes au changement et à l’influence par le biais du processus démocratique et des campagnes de la société civile. Et leurs violations doivent, si possible, être dénoncées devant les tribunaux ou les autorités judiciaires.

 

 

 

 

L’Etat est l’acteur central de toute réclamation relative au droit à l'éducation, il est le premier responsable de sa délivrance, le premier à le mettre en œuvre, le premier garant, le signataire vis-à-vis des normes et des standards internationaux, et il est lié par l’obligation de respecter, protéger et mettre en œuvre le droit à l'éducation. C’est en conséquence l’Etat qui doit être jugé et questionné sur les textes relatifs au droit à l’éducation, qu’il s’agisse de la Constitution, de lois ou de stratégies politiques.

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.