The SEAMEO Secretariat established two Task Forces to look at rehabilitation programs in Indonesia and in Thailand. The SEAMEO Secretariat Director, Dr. de Jesús, wrote to ICDE and asked for the organisation’s participation in the reconstruction efforts. ICDE responded by writing, in cooperation with SEAMEO SEAMOLEC, two project proposals that were presented to the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs seeking for funding. Specifically, within the area of Education, the partners propose to focus on curriculum development and teachers training. (med linker til det som er skrevet lengre ned).
These projects are still under evaluation, having received positive feedback after a number of meetings with the Ministry’s officials.
- Background for the projects
- Proposal on Alternative Curriculum Development
- Proposal on Training for Substitute Teachers on Teaching Skills
The big earthquake followed by the Tsunami that occurred in December 2004 has been devastating especially in Aceh and North Sumatra Provinces in Indonesia. It has claimed the lives of around 2000 teachers, 230 administrative staff, more than 250 faculty members, and 86,545 students. Besides, this catastrophe has devastated education facilities, the infrastructures of central, provincial, and regency governments, including structure and infrastructure of the educational support and services. Up to February 2005, the total number of formal education institutions that were found totally and partially damaged represented 23,5 percent of the total number of education institutions before the disaster. It also destroyed 2197 non-formal education institutions.
In the face of the worst natural disaster in modern times rehabilitation efforts are needed and priorities were set on the areas of health, livelihood and education, considered basic need areas which development go beyond the rescue and relief stage, but more on longer term rehabilitation efforts.
Based on that framework and responding to emergency and crisis situation, i.e., in Aceh and North Sumatra’s education post Tsunami, the proposals presented attempt to provide prompt and relevance assistance based on the strength and expertise of the partners involved. Particularly, they expect to be able to respond and contribute to the Government’s rehabilitation plan, i.e.
a. Training for the teachers and non-teaching staffs including training temporary teacher assistants or substitutes to proceed education during the rehabilitation phase (mid-term)
b. Providing scholarship for teachers substitutes and students to be teachers to pursue minimal requirement to be teachers
c. Renewing teaching and learning process to improve quality and relevancy of the education in the tsunami hit area.
d. Empowering the local communities to participate actively in setting up better education systems and in providing sufficient system of information.
Proposal on Alternative Curriculum Development:
The circumstances in Aceh thus far – up to the time of tsunami disaster indicate the needs for special inclusion of some major issues in the curriculum. The issue of economic reviving has called for survival skills, included in the area of life skills, which integrate the local wisdom as the underlying principles of social interaction. In addition, the fulfilment of basic needs, i.e., health, might also argue for efforts to promote healthy life, to begin with environmental awareness, water and sanitation management, and value of hygiene in the life of the new Aceh generation. Furthermore, since the lack of communication linkages has emerged as a critical problem in Aceh, assistance to the region is shaped to help build the foundations for an ICT infrastructure. The condition certainly calls for ICT literacy among teachers and students. The conflict situation in Aceh has also caused Aceh to be relatively secluded from external exposure. The situation must not remain the same, as the globalisation has called for a borderless and global village. Multicultural perspectives including global perspectives, tolerance and the promotion of pluralistic approaches become vital in this situation.
Based on the above reasons, the new curriculum is expected to take care into account, among others, three major considerations, i.e., the competencies of life skills (including the integration of local wisdom, disaster awareness, and ICT literacy), the competencies and value education on the issue of water management (including water hygiene and environmental issues), and multicultural education (including exposure to global perspectives, promotion pluralistic community, and tolerance and openness to diversity).
Objectives:
1.To train teachers in developing alternative curriculum for their school. According to the Education Act No. 20/2003, the curriculum at elementary and secondary level is developed based on National Standard of Education (NSE) by the School Boards under the supervision of local branch of Ministry of National Education (MONE). Furthermore, since the implementation of school-based management, each school has to develop their own curriculum based on the NSE. Therefore, teachers must have adequate knowledge and skills to develop as well as to implement their own alternative curriculum.
2. To train educators at higher teacher education institutions in developing alternative curriculum for schools and facilitating the implementation of that curriculum in school. As future generation of teachers and educators are coming from those higher education institutions, the educators at those institutions must also have adequate knowledge and skills in developing and implementing alternative curriculum. Thus, they can train the future school teachers within the framework of alternative curriculum.
Proposal on Training for Substitute Teachers on Teaching Skills
After initial efforts involving Government of Indonesia and various parties to provide rescue and relief efforts, the plan of GOI in rehabilitating the education system in Aceh covers various areas, among others, training for the teachers and non-teaching staffs including recruiting temporary teacher assistants to deliver education during the receptive emergency phase. Following the recruitment there is the training for teachers.
Responding to the above-mentioned rehabilitation effort, SEAMOLEC-ICDE propose a strategy to equip the substitute teachers recruited for teaching in Aceh with instructional skills and competences. The project will be conducted in collaboration with FKIP-Unsyah (Faculty of Education, Syiahkuala University), with the purpose of training substitute teachers for Aceh in the area of instructional skills. FKIP UNSYAH is the only public teacher education institution in Aceh, which provides teacher educators for the training of the substitute teachers. By involving teacher educators from this local institution, the local culture and tradition will be integrated in the training. Basically, the training will be consisted of two phases, which are 1- the training of substitute teachers and 2- the follow-up certification by Universitas Terbuka (the Open University of Indonesia) that will be materialized in the form fellowships for at least 67% of the substitute teachers trained in the first phase. The second phase will be elaborated specifically in a separate project proposal.
25 March 2005